THE  LIBRARY— 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


QUEEN  ELIZABETH. 

(The  Ermine  Portrait.) 
After  the  Painting  by  Zucchero,  Hatfleld  House,  Englaui, 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE  story  of  how  the  Short  History  of  the  English  People 
came  to  be  written  would  be  the  story  of  Mr.  Green's  life, 
from  the  time  when  his  boyish  interest  was  first  awakened  by 
the  world  beyond  himself  until  his  work  was  done.  So 
closely  are  the  work  and  the  worker  bound  together  that  un- 
less the  biography  be  fully  written  no  real  account  of  the 
growth  of  the  book  can  indeed  be  given.  But  in  issuing  a 
Revised  Edition  of  the  History,  a  slight  sketch  of  the  his- 
torical progress  of  the  writer's  mind,  and  of  the  gradual 
way  in  which  the  plan  of  his  work  grew  up,  may  not  seem 
out  of  place. 

John  Richard  Green,  who  was  born  at  Oxford  in  December. 
1837,  was  sent  at  eight  years  old  to  Magdalen  Grammar 
School,  then  held  in  a  small  room  within  the  precincts  of  the 
College.  The  Oxford  world  about  him  was  full  of  sugges- 
tions of  a  past  which  very  early  startled  his  curiosity  and 
fired  his  imagination.  The  gossiping  tales  of  an  old  dame 
who  had  seen  George  the  Third  drive  through  the  town  in  a 
coach  and  six  were  his  first  lessons  in  history.  Year  after 
year  he  took  part  with  excited  fancy  in  the  procession  of  the 
Magdalen  choir  boys  to  the  College  tower  on  May  Day,  to 
sing  at  the  sunrisitig  a  Hymn  to  the  Trinity  which  had  re- 
placed the  Mass  chanted  in  pre-Reformation  days,  and  to 
"  jangle"  the  bells  in  recognition  of  an  immemorial  festival. 
St.  Giles'  fair,  the  "beating  of  the  bounds,"  even  the  name 
of  '•  Pennyfarthing  Street,"  were  no  less  records  of  a  mys- 
terious past  than  Chapel  or  College  or  the  very  trees  of  Mag- 
dalen Walk  ;  and  he  once  received,  breathless  and  awe-struck, 
a  prize  from  the  hands  of  the  centenarian  President  of  the 
College,  Dr.  Routh,  the  last  man  who  ever  wore  a  wig  in  Ox- 
ford, a  man  who  had  himself  seen  Dr.  Johnson  stand  in  the 
High  Street  with  one  foot  on  either  side  of  the  keunel  that 

i 

2041582 


INTRODUCTION. 

ran  down  the  middle  of  the  way,  the  street  boys  standing 
round,  "  none  daring  to  interrupt  the  meditations  of  the 
great  lexicographer."  "  You  are  a  clever  boy,"  said  the  old 
man  as  he  gave  the  prize  and  shook  him  by  the  hand. 

His  curiosity  soon  carried  him  beyond  Oxford  :  and  in 
very  early  days  he  learned  to  wander  on  Saints' days  and 
holidays  to  the  churches  of  neighboring  villages,  and  there 
shut  himself  in  to  rub  brasses  and  study  architectural 
moldings.  Other  interests  followed  on  his  ecclesiastical 
training.  He  remembered  the  excitement  which  was  pro- 
duced in  Oxford  by  Layard's  discovery  of  the  Nestorians  in 
the  Euphrates  valley.  One  day  Mr.  Ramsay  gathered  round 
him  the  boys  who  were  at  play  in  Magdalen  Walk  and  told 
them  of  his  journey  to  see  these  people  ;  and  one  at  least  of 
his  hearers  plunged  eagerly  into  problems  then  much  dis- 
cussed of  the  relations  of  orthodox  believers  to  Monophysites, 
and  the  distinctions  between  heresy  and  schism,  questions 
which  occupied  him  many  years.  Knowledge  of  this  kind, 
he  said  long  afterwards,  had  been  a  real  gain  to  him. 
"  The  study  of  what  the  Monophysites  did  in  Syria,  and  the 
Monothelites  in  Egypt,  has  taught  me  what  few  historians 
know — the  intimate  part  religion  plays  in  a  nation's  history, 
and  how  closely  it  joins  itself  to  a  people's  life." 

Living  in  a  strictly  Conservative  atmosphere,  he  had  been 
very  diligently  brought  up  as  a  Tory  and  a  High  Churchman. 
But  when  he  was  about  fourteen,  orthodox  Conservatism 
and  school  life  came  to  a  close  which  then  seemed  to  him 
very  tragic.  A  school  essay  was  set  on  Charles  the  First ; 
and  as  the  boy  read  earnestly  every  book  he  could  find  on 
the  subject,  it  suddenly  burst  on  him  that  Charles  was 
wrong.  The  essay,  written  with  a  great  deal  of  feeling  un- 
der this  new  and  strong  conviction,  gained  the  prize  over  the 
heads  of  boys  older  and  till  then  reputed  abler  ;  but  it  drew 
down  on  him  unmeasured  disapproval.  Canon  Mozley,  who 
examined,  remonstrated  in  his  grave  way:  "Your  essay  is 
very  good,  but  remember  I  do  not  agree  with  your  conclu- 
sions, and  you  will  in  all  probability  see  reason  to  change 
them  as  you  grow  older."  The  head-master  took  a  yet  more 
severe  view  of  such  a  change  of  political  creed.  But  the  im- 
pulse to  Liberalism  had  been  definitely  given  ;  and  had  in- 
deed brought  with  it  many  other  grave  questionings.  When 


INTRODUCTION.  ill 

at  the  next  examination  he  shot  np  to  the  head  of  the  school, 
his  master  advised  that  lie  should  be  withdrawn  from  Magdalen, 
to  the  dismay  both  of  himself  and  of  the  uncle  with  whom 
he  lived.  The  uncle  indeed  had  his  own  grounds  of  alarm. 
John  had  one  day  stood  at  a  tailor's  window  in  Oxford  where 
Lord  John  Russell's  Durham  Letter  was  spread  out  to  view, 
and,  as  he  read  it,  had  come  to  his  own  conclusions  as  to  its 
wisdom.  He  even  declared  the  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Act  to 
be  absurd.  His  uncle,  horrified  at  so  extreme  a  heresy,  with 
angry  decision  ordered  him  to  find  at  once  another  home ; 
and  when  after  a  time  the  agitation  had  died  away  and  he 
was  allowed  to  come  back,  it  was  on  the  condition  of  never 
again  alluding  to  so  painful  a  subject.  The  new-found 
errors  clung  to  him,  however,  when  he  went  shortly  after- 
wards to  live  in  the  country  with  a  tutor.  "  I  wandered 
about  the  fields  thinking,"  he  said,  "  but  I  never  went  back 
from  the  opinions  I  had  begun  to  form." 

It  was  when  he  was  about  sixteen  that  Gibbon  fell  into 
his  hands  ;  and  from  that  moment  the  enthusiasm  of  history 
took  hold  of  him.  "  Man  and  man's  history  "  became  hence- 
forth the  dominant  interest  of  his  life.  When  he  returned 
to  Oxford  with  a  scholarship  to  Jesus  College,  an  instinct  of 
chivalrous  devotion  inspired  his  resolve  that  the  study  of  his- 
tory should  never  become  with  him  "a  matter  of  classes  or 
fellowships,"  nor  should  be  touched  by  the  rivalries,  the 
conventional  methods,  the  artificial  limitations,  and  the 
utilitarian  aims  of  the  Schools.  College  work  and  history 
work  went  on  apart,  with  much  mental  friction  and  difficulty 
of  adjustment  and  sorrow  of  heart.  Without  any  advisers, 
almost  without  friends,  he  groped  his  way,  seeking  in  very 
solitary  fashion  after  his  own  particular  vocation.  His  first 
historical  efforts  were  spent  on  that  which  lay  immediately 
about  him  ;  and  the  series  of  papers  which  he  sent  at  this 
time  to  the  Oxford  Chronicle  on  "  Oxford  in  the  last  Cen- 
tury" are  instinct  with  all  the  vivid  imagination  of  his  inter 
work,  and  tell  their  tale  after  a  method  and  in  a  style  which 
was  already  perfectly  natural  to  him.  He  read  enormously, 
but  history  was  never  to  him  wholly  a  matter  of  books.  The 
Town  was  still  his  teacher.  There  was  then  little  help  to  be 
had  for  the  history  of  Oxford  or  any  other  town.  "So 
wholly  had  the  story  of  the  towns,"  he  wrote  later,  "passed 


iv  INTRODUCTION. 

out  of  the  minds  of  men  that  there  is  still  not  a  history  of 
our  country  which  devotes  a  single  page  to  it,  and  there  is 
hardly  an  antiquary  who  has  cared  to  disentomb  the  tragic 
records  of  fights  fought  for  freedom  in  this  narrow  theater 
from  the  archives  which  still  contain  them.  The  treatise  of 
Brady  written  from  a  political,  that  of  Madox  from  a  narrow 
antiquarian,  point  of  view  ;  the  summaries  of  charters  given 
by  the  Commissioners  under  the  Municipal  Eeforrn  Act  ;  the 
volumes  of  Stephens  and  Merewether  ;  and  here  and  there  a 
little  treatise  on  isolated  towns  are  the  only  printed  materials 
for  the  study  of  the  subject."  Other  materials  were 
abundant.  St.  Giles'  Fair  was  full  of  lessons  for  him. 
He  has  left  an  amusing  account  of  how,  on  a  solemn  day 
which  came  about  once  in  eight  years,  he  marched  with 
Mayor  and  Corporation  round  the  city  boundaries.  He  lin- 
gered over  the  memory  of  St.  Martin's  Church,  the  center  of 
the  town  life,  the  folk-mote  within  its  walls,  the  low  shed 
outside  where  mayor  and  bailiff  administered  justice, 
the  bell  above  which  rang  out  its  answer  to  the  tocsin  of  the 
gownsmen  in  St.  Mary's,  the  butchery  and  spicery  and  vint- 
nery  which  clustered  round  in  the  narrow  streets.  "  In  a 
walk  through  Oxford  one  may  find  illustrations  of  every 
period  of  our  annals.  The  cathedral  still  preserves  the  mem- 
ory of  the  Mercian  St.  Frideswide  ;  the  tower  of  the  Nor- 
man Earls  frowns  down  on  the  waters  of  the  Mill  ;  around 
Merton  hang  the  memories  of  the  birth  of  our  Constitution  ; 
the  New  Learning  and  the  Eeformation  mingle  in  Christ 
Church;  a  'grind'  along  the  Marston  Road  follows  the 
track  of  the  army  of  Fairfax  ;  the  groves  of  Magdalen  pre- 
serve the  living  traditions  of  the  last  of  the  Stewarts." 

Two  years,  however,  of  solitary  effort  to  work  out  problems 
of  education,  of  life,  of  history,  left  him  somewhat  dis- 
heartened and  bankrupt  in  energy.  A  mere  accident  at  last 
brought  the  first  counsel  and  encouragement  he  had  ever 
known.  Some  chance  led  him  one  day  to  the  lecture-room 
where  Stanley,  then  Canon  of  Christ  Church,  was  speaking 
on  the  history  of  Dissent.  Startled  out  of  the  indifference 
with  which  he  had  entered  the  room,  he  suddenly  found 
himself  listening  with  an  interest  and  wonder  which  nothing 
in  Oxford  had  awakened,  till  the  lecturer  closed  with  the 
words,  " '  Magna  est  veritas  et  pravalebit,'  words  so  great 


INTRODUCTION.  V 

that  I  could  almost  prefer  them  to  the  motto  of  our  own 
University,  ' Dominus  illuminatio  meet."  In  his  excite- 
ment he  exclaimed,  as  Stanley,  on  leaving  the  hall,  passed 
close  by  him,  "  Do  you  know,  sir,  that  the  words  you  quoted, 
'  Magna  est  veritas  et  prcevalebit,'  are  the  motto  of  the 
Town?"  "  Is  it  possible  ?  How  interesting!  When  will 
you  come  and  see  me  and  talk  about  it  ?"  cried  Stanley  ; 
and  from  that  moment  a  warm  friendship  sprang  up.  '•'  Then 
and  after/'  Mr.  Green  wrote,  "  I  heard  you  speak  of  work, 
not  as  a  thing  of  classes  and  fellowships,  but  as  something 
worthy  for  its  own  sake,  worthy  because  it  made  us  like  the 
great  Worker.  '  If  you  cannot  or  will  not  work  at  the  work 
which  Oxford  gives  you,  at  any  rate  work  at  something/  I 
took  up  my  old  boy-dreams  of  history  again.  I  think  I  have 
been  a  steady  worker  ever  since." 

It  was  during  these  years  at  Oxford  that  his  first  large 
historical  schemes  were  laid.  His  plan  took  the  shape  of  a 
History  of  the  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  ;  and  seeking  in 
Augustine  and  his  followers  a  clue  through  the  maze  of 
fifteen  centuries,  he  proposed  under  this  title  to  write  in 
fact  the  whole  story  of  Christian  civilization  in  England. 
"No  existing  historians  help  me,"  he  declared  in  his  early 
days  of  planning  ;  "rather  I  have  been  struck  by  the  utter 
blindness  of  one  and  all  to  the  subject  which  they  profess  to 
treat — the  national  growth  and  development  of  our  country." 
When  in  18GO  he  left  Oxford  for  the  work  he  had  chosen  as 
curate  in  one  of  the  poorest  parishes  of  East  London,  he 
carried  with  him  thoughts  of  history.  Letters  full  of  ardent 
discussion  of  the  theological  and  social  problems  about  him 
still  tell  of  hours  saved  here  and  there  for  the  British 
Museum,  of  work  done  on  Cuthbert,  on  Columba,  on  Irish 
Church  History — of  a  scheme  for  a  history  of  Somerset, 
which  bid  fair  to  extend  far,  and  which  led  direct  to  Glas- 
tonbury,  Dustan,  and  Early  English  matters.  Out  of  his 
po'verty,  too,  he  had  gathered  books  about  him,  books  won 
at  a  cost  which  made  them  the  objects  of  a  singular  affec- 
tion ;  and  he  never  opened  a  volume  of  his  "Acta  Sanc- 
torum "  without  a  lingering  memory  of  the  painful  efforts 
by  which  he  had  brought  together  the  volumes  one  by  one, 
and  how  many  days  he  had  gone  without  dinner  when  there 
was  no  other  way  of  buying  them. 


vi  INTRODUCTION. 

But  books  were  not  his  only  sources  of  knowledge.  To 
the  last  he  looked  on  his  London  life  as  having  given  him 
his  best  lessons  in  history.  It  was  with  his  churchwardens, 
his  schoolmasters,  in  vestry  meetings,  in  police  courts,  at 
boards  of  guardians,  in  service  in  chapel  or  church,  in  the 
daily  life  of  the  dock-laborer,  the  tradesman,  the  coster- 
monger,  in  the  summer  visitation  of  cholera,  in  the  winter 
misery  that  followed  economic  changes,  that  he  learnt  what 
the  life  of  the  people  meant  as  perhaps  no  historian  had  ever 
learnt  it  before.  Constantly  struck  down  as  he  was  by 
illness,  even  the  days  of  sickness  were  turned  to  use.  Every 
drive,  every  railway  journey,  every  town  he  passed  through 
in  brief  excursions  for  health's  sake,  added  something  to  his 
knowledge  ;  if  he  was  driven  to  recover  strength  to  a  seaside 
lodging  he  could  still  note  a  description  of  Ebbsflcet  or  Rich- 
borough  or  Minster,  so  that  there  is  scarcely  a  picture  of  sce- 
nery or  of  geographical  conditions  in  his  book  which  is  not  the 
record  of  a  victory  over  the  overwhelming  languor  or  disease. 

After  two  years  of  observation,  of  reading,  and  of  thought, 
the  Archbishops  no  longer  seemed  very  certain  guides 
through  the  centuries  of  England's  growth.  They  filled  the 
place,  it  would  appear,  no  better  than  the  Kings.  If  some 
of  them  were  great  leaders  among  the  people,  others  were  of 
little  account ;  and  after  the  sixteenth  century  the  upgrowth 
of  the  Nonconformists  broke  the  history  of  the  people,  taken 
from  the  merely  ecclesiastical  point  of  view,  into  two  irre- 
concilable fractions,  and  utterly  destroyed  any  possibility  of 
artistic  treatment  of  the  story  as  a  whole.  In  a  new  plan  he 
looked  far  behind  Augustine  and  Canterbury,  and  threw  him- 
self into  geology,  the  physical  geography  of  our  island  in 
prehistoric  times,  and  the  study  of  the  cave-men  and  the 
successive  races  that  peopled  Britain,  as  introductory  to  the 
later  history  of  England.  But  his  first  and  dominating  idea 
quickly  thrust  all  others  aside.  It  was  of  the  English 
People  itself  that  he  must  write  if  he  would  write  after  his 
own  heart.  The  nine  years  spent  in  the  monotonous  reaches 
of  dreary  streets  that  make  up  Hoxton  and  Stepney,  the 
close  contact  with  sides  of  life  little  known  to  students,  had 
only  deepened  the  impressions  with  which  the  idea  of  a  people's 
life  had  in  Oxford  struck  on  his  imagination.  ef  A  State," 
he  would  say,  "  is  accidental ;  it  can  be  made  or  unmade, 


INTRODUCTION.  vii 

and  is  no  real  thing  to  me.  But  a  nation  is  very  real  to  me. 
That  you  can  neither  make  nor  destroy."  All  his  writings, 
the  historical  articles  which  he  sent  to  the  Saturday  Review 
and  letters  to  his  much-honored  friend,  Mr.  Freeman,  alike 
tended  in  the  same  direction,  and  show  how  persistently  he 
was  working  out  his  philosophy  of  history.  The  lessons 
which  years  before  he  had  found  written  in  the  streets  and 
lanes  of  his  native  town  were  not  forgotten.  "  History,"  he 
wrote  in  1869,  "  we  are  told  by  publishers,  is  the  most  un- 
popular of  all  branches  of  literature  at  the  present  day,  but 
it  is  only  unpopular  because  it  seems  more  and  more  to  sever 
itself  from  all  that  can  touch  the  heart  of  a  people.  In  me- 
dieval history,  above  all,  the  narrow  ecclesiastical  character 
of  the  annals  which  serve  as  its  base,  instead  of  being  cor- 
rected by  a  wider  research  into  the  memorials  which  sur- 
round us,  has  been  actually  intensified  by  the  partial  method 
of  their  study,  till  the  story  of  a  great  people  seems  likely  to 
be  lost  in  the  mere  squabbles  of  priests.  Now  there  is  hardly 
a  better  corrective  for  all  this  to  be  found  than  to  set  a  man 
frankly  in  the  streets  of  a  simple  English  town,  and  to  bid 
him  work  out  the  history  of  the  men  who  had  lived  and  died 
there.  The  mill  by  the  stream,  the  tolls  in  the  market-place, 
the  brasses  of  its  burghers  in  the  church,  the  names  of  its 
streets,  the  lingering  memory  of  its  guilds,  the  mace  of  its 
mayor,  tell  us  more  of  the  past  of  England  than  the  spire  of 
Sarum  or  the  martyrdom  of  Canterbury.  We  say  designedly 
of  the  past  of  England,  rather  than  of  the  past  of  English 
towns.  ...  In  England  the  history  of  the  town  and  of  the 
country  are  one.  The  privilege  of  the  burgher  has  speedily 
widened  into  the  liberty  of  the  people  at  large.  The  muni- 
cipal charter  has  merged  into  the  great  charter  of  the  realm. 
All  the  little  struggles  over  toll  and  tax,  all  the  little  claims 
of  'custom*  and  franchise,  have  told  on  the  general  ad- 
vance of  liberty  and  law.  The  townmotes  of  the  Norman 
reigns  tided  free  discussion  and  self-government  over  from 
the  Witanagemot  of  the  old  England  to  the  Parliament  of 
the  new.  The  hnsting  court,  with  its  resolute  assertion  of 
justice  by  one's  peers,  gave  us  the  whole  fabric  of  our  judi- 
cial legislation.  The  Continental  town  lost  its  individuality 
by  sinking  to  the  servile  level  of  the  land  from  which  it  had 
isolated  itself.  The  English  town  lost  its  individuality  by 


VU1  INTRODUCTION. 

lifting  the  country  at  large  to  its  own  level  of  freedom  and 
law." 

The  earnestness,  however,  with  which  he  had  thrown  him- 
self into  his  parish  work  left  no  time  for  any  thought  of 
working  out  his  cherished  plans.  His  own  needs  were  few, 
and  during  nearly  three  years  he  spent  on  the  necessities  of 
schools  and  of  the  poor  more  than  the  whole  of  the  income 
he  drew  from  the  Church,  while  he  provided  for  his  own 
support  by  writing  at  night,  after  his  day's  work  was  done, 
articles  for  the  Saturday  Review.  At  last,  in  1869,  the 
disease  which  had  again  and  again  attacked  him  fell  with 
renewed  violence  on  a  frame  exhausted  with  labors  and 
anxieties.  All  active  work  was  forever  at  an  end — the 
doctors  told  him  there  was  little  hope  of  prolonging  his  life 
six  months.  It  was  at  this  moment,  the  first  moment  of 
leisure  he  had  ever  known,  that  he  proposed  "  to  set  down 
a  few  notions  which  I  have  conceived  concerning  history," 
which  "  might  serve  as  an  introduction  to  better  things  if  I 
lived,  and  might  stand  for  some  work  done  if  I  did  not." 
The  "Short  History"  was  thus  begun.  When  the  six 
months  had  passed  he  had  resisted  the  first  severity  of  the 
attack,  but  he  remained  with  scarcely  a  hold  on  life  ;  and 
incessantly  vexed  by  the  suffering  and  exhaustion  of  constant 
illness,  perplexed  by  questions  as  to  the  mere  means  of  live- 
lihood, thwarted  and  hindered  by  difficulties  about  books  in 
the  long  winters  abroad,  he  still  toiled  on  at  his  task.  "  I 
wonder,"  he  said  once  in  answer  to  some  critic,  "  how  in 
those  years  of  physical  pain  and  despondency  I  could  ever 
have  written  the  book  at  all."  Nearly  five  years  were  given  to 
the  work.  The  sheets  were  written  and  re-written,  corrected 
and  canceled  and  begun  again  till  it  seemed  as  though  revi- 
sion would  never  have  an  end.  "  The  book  is  full  of  faults," 
he  declared  sorrowfully,  "  which  make  me  almost  hopeless 
of  ever  learning  to  write  well."  As  the  work  went  on  his 
friends  of  ten  remonstrated  with  much  energy.  Dean  Stanley 
could  not  forgive  its  missing  so  dramatic  an  opening  as 
Caesar's  landing  would  have  afforded.  Others  judged  se- 
verely his  style,  his  method,  his  view  of  history,  his  selection 
and  rejection  of  facts.  Their  judgment  left  him  "  lonely," 
he  said  ;  and  with  the  sensitiveness  of  the  artistic  nature,  ita 
quick  apprehension  of  unseen  danger,  its  craving  for  sym- 


INTRODUCTION.  i\ 

pathy,  he  saw  with  perhaps  needless  clearness  of  vision  the 
perils  to  his  chance  of  winning  a  hearing  which  were  proph- 
esied. He  agreed  that  the  "  faults "  with  which  he  was 
charged  might  cause  the  ruin  of  his  hopes  of  being  accepted 
either  by  historians  or  by  the  public  ;  and  yet  these  ve*ry 
"faults,"  he  insisted,  were  bound  up  with  his  faith.  The 
book  was  in  fact,  if  not  in  name,  the  same  as  that  which  he 
had  planned  at  Oxford;  to  correct  its  "faults"  he  must 
change  his  whole  conception  of  history  ;  he  must  renounce 
his  belief  that  it  was  the  great  impulses  of  national  feeling, 
and  not  the  policy  of  statesmen,  that  formed  the  ground- 
work and  basis  of  the  history  of  nations,  and  his  certainty 
that  political  history  could  only  be  made  intelligible  and 
just  by  basing  it  on  social  history  in  its  largest  sense. 

"  I  may  be  wrong  in  my  theories,"  he  wrote,  "but  it  is 
better  for  me  to  hold  to  what  I  think  true,  and  to  work  it 
out  as  I  best  can,  even  if  I  work  it  out  badly,  than  to  win 
the  good  word  of  some  people  I  respect  and  others  I  love  " 
by  giving  up  a  real  conviction.  Amid  all  his  fears  as  to  the 
failings  of  his  work  he  still  clung  to  the  belief  that  it  went 
on  the  old  traditional  lines  of  English  historians.  However 
Gibbon  might  err  in  massing  together  his  social  facts  in 
chapters  apart,  however  inadequate  Hume's  attempts  at  social 
history  might  be,  however  Macaulay  might  look  at  social 
facts  merely  as  bits  of  external  ornaments,  they  all,  he  main- 
tained, professed  the  faith  he  held.  He  used  to  protest  that 
even  those  English  historians  who  desired  to  be  merely  "  ex- 
ternal and  pragmatic  "  could  not  altogether  reach  their  aim 
as  though  they  had  been  "High  Dutchmen."  The  free 
current  of  national  life  in  England  was  too  strong  to  allow 
them  to  become  ever  wholly  lost  in  State-papers ;  and  be- 
cause he  believed  that  Englishmen  could  therefore  best  com- 
bine the  love  of  accuracy  and  the  appreciation  of  the  outer 
aspects  of  national  or  political  life  with  a  perception  of  the 
spiritual  forces  from  which  these  mere  outer  phenomena 
proceed,  he  never  doubted  that  "  the  English  ideal  of  history 
would  in  the  long  run  be  what  Gibbon  made  it  in  his  day — 
the  first  in  the  world." 

When  at  last,  by  a  miracle  of  resolution  and  endurance, 
the  "Short  History"  was  finished,  discouraging  reports 
reached  him  from  critics  whose  judgment  he  respected  ;  and 


X  INTRODUCTION. 

his  despondency  increased.  "  Never  mind,  you  mayn't  suc- 
ceed this  time,"  said  one  of  his  best  friends,  "but  you  are 
sure  to  succeed  some  day."  He  never  forgot  that  in  this 
time  of  depression  there  were  two  friends,  Mr.  Stopford 
Brooke  and  his  publisher,  who  were  unwavering  in  their 
belief  in  his  work  and  in  hopefulness  of  the  result. 

The  book  was  published  in  1874,  when  he  was  little  more 
than  36  years  of  age.  Before  a  month  was  over,  in  the 
generous  welcome  given  it  by  scholars  and  by  the  English 
people,  he  found  the  reward  of  his  long  endurance.  Mr. 
Green  in  fact  was  the  first  English  historian  who  had  either 
conceived  or  written  of  English  history  from  the  side  of  the 
principles  which  his  book  asserted  ;  and  in  so  doing  he  had 
given  to  his  fellow-citizens  such  a  story  of  their  Common- 
wealth as  has  in  fact  no  parallel  in  any  other  country.  The 
opposition  and  criticism  which  he  met  with  were  in  part  a 
measure  of  the  originality  of  his  conception.  Success,  how- 
ever, and  criticism  alike  came  to  him  as  they  come  to  the 
true  scholar.  "I  know,  he  said  in  this  first  moment  of 
unexpected  recognition,  "what  men  will  say  of  me,  'He 
died  learning.'" 

I  know  of  no  excuse  which  I  could  give  for  attempting 
any  revision  of  the  "  Short  History,"  save  that  this  was  my 
husband's  last  charge  to  me.  Nor  can  I  give  any  other  safe- 
guard for  the  way  in  which  I  have  performed  the  work  than 
the  sincere  and  laborious  effort  I  have  made  to  carry  out 
that  charge  faithfully.  I  have  been  very  careful  not  to  in- 
terfere in  any  way  with  the  plan  or  structure  of  the  book, 
and  save  in  a  few  exceptional  cases,  in  which  I  knew  Mr. 
Green's  wishes,  or  where  a  change  of  chronology  made  some 
slight  change  in  arrangement  necessary,  I  have  not  altered 
its  order.  My  work  has  been  rather  that  of  correcting  mis- 
takes of  detail  which  must  of  a  certainty  occur  in  a  story 
which  covers  so  vast  a  field  ;  and  in  this  I  have  been  mainly 
guided  throughout  by  the  work  of  revision  done  by  Mr.  Green 
himself  in  his  larger  "  History."  In  this  History  he  had  at 
first  proposed  merely  to  prepare  a  library  edition  of  the 
"  Short  History  "  revised  and  corrected.  In  his  hands,  how- 
ever, it  became  a  wholly  different  book,  the  chief  part  of  it 
having  been  rewritten  at  mach  greater  length,  and  on  an  al- 


INTRODUCTION.  XI 

tered  plan.  I  have  therefore  only  used  its  corrections  within 
very  definite  limits,  so  far  as  they  could  be  adapted  to  a  book 
of  different  scope  and  arrangement.  Though  since  his  death 
much  has  been  written  on  English  History,  his  main  con- 
clusions may  be  regarded  as  established,  and  I  do  not  think 
they  would  have  been  modified,  save  in  a  few  cases  of  detail, 
even  by  such  books  as  the  last  two  volumes  of  the  Bishop  of 
Chester's  "Constitutional  History,"  and  his  "  Lectures  on 
Modern  History  "  ;  Mr.  Gardiner's  later  volumes  on  Charles's 
reign,  and  Mr.  Skene's  later  volumes  on  "Early  Scottish 
History."  In  his  own  judgment,  severely  as  he  judged 
himself,  the  errors  in  the  "Short  History"  wero  not  the 
mistakes  that  show  a  real  mis-reading  of  this  or  that 
period,  or  betray  an  unhistoric  mode  of  looking  at  things  as 
a  whole  ;  nor  has  their  correction  in  fact  involved  any  serious 
change.  In  some  passages,  even  where  I  knew  that  Mr. 
Green's  own  criticism  went  far  beyond  that  of  any  of  his 
critics,  I  have  not  felt  justified  in  making  any  attempt  to 
expand  or  re-write  what  could  only  have  been  re-written  by 
himself.  In  other  matters  which  have  been  the  subject  of 
comments  of  some  severity,  the  ground  of  his  own  decision 
remained  unshaken  ;  as  i'or  example,  the  scanty  part  played 
by  Literature  after  1660,  which  Mr.  Green  regretted  he  had 
not  explained  in  his  first  preface.  It  was  necessary  that  the 
book  should  be  brought  to  an  end  in  about  eight  hundred 
pages.  Something  must  needs  be  left  out,  and  he  deliber- 
ately chose  Literature,  because  it  seemed  to  him  that  after 
1660  Literature  ceased  to  stand  in  the  forefront  of  national 
characteristics,  and  that  Science,  Industry,  and  the  like, 
played  a  much  greater  part.  So  "for  truth's  sake  "he  set 
aside  a  strong  personal  wish  to  say  much  that  was  in  his  mind 
on  the  great  writers  of  later  times,  and  turned  away  to  cot- 
ton-spinning and  Pitt's  finance.  "  It  cost  me  much  trouble," 
he  said,  "and  I  knew  the  book  would  not  be  so  bright,  but 
I  think  I  did  rightly." 

It  was  in  this  temper  that  all  his  work  was  done  ;  and  I 
would  only  add  a  few  words  which  I  value  more  especially, 
because  they  tell  how  the  sincerity,  the  patient  self-denial, 
the  earnestness  of  purpose,  that  underlay  all  his  vivid  activ- 
ity were  recognized  by  one  who  was  ever  to  him  a  master  in 
English  History,  the  Bishop  of  Chester.  "  Mr.  Green,"  he 


Xll  INTRODUCTION. 

wrote,  "  possessed  in  no  scanty  measure  all  the  gifts  which 
contribute  to  the  making  of  a  great  historian.  He  combined, 
so  far  as  the  history  of  England  is  concerned,  a  complete  and 
firm  grasp  of  the  subject  in  its  unity  and  integrity  with  a 
wonderful  command  of  details,  and  a  thorough  sense  of  per- 
spective and  proportion.  All  his  work  was  real  and  original 
work  ;  few  people  besides  those  who  knew  him  well  would 
see  under  the  charming  ease  and  vivacity  of  his  style  the 
deep  research  and  sustained  industry  of  the  laborious  stu- 
dent. But  it  was  so  ;  there  was  no  department  of  our  na- 
tional records  that  he  had  not  studied  and,  I  think  I  may  say, 
mastered.  Hence  I  think  the  unity  of  his  dramatic  scenes 
and  the  cogency  of  his  historical  arguments.  Like  other 
people  he  made  mistakes  sometimes  ;  but  scarcely  ever  does 
the  correction  of  his  mistakes  affect  either  the  essence  of  the 
picture  or  the  force  of  the  argument.  And  in  him  the  desire 
of  stating  and  pointing  the  truth  of  history  was  as  strong  as 
the  wish  to  make  both  his  pictures  and  his  arguments  tell- 
ing and  forcible.  He  never  treated  an  opposing  view  with 
intolerance  or  contumely ;  his  handling  of  controversial 
matter  was  exemplary.  And  then,  to  add  still  more  to  the 
debt  we  owe  him,  there  is  the  wonderful  simplicity  and 
beauty  of  the  way  in  which  he  tells  his  tale,  which  more 
than  anything  else  has  served  to  make  English  history  a 
popular,  and  as  it  ought  to  be,  if  not  the  first,  at  least  the 
second  study  of  all  Englishmen." 

I  have  to  thank  those  friends  of  Mr.  Green,  the  Bishop  of 
Chester,  Canon  Creighton,  Professor  Bryce,  and  Mr.«  Lecky, 
who,  out  of  their  regard  for  his  memory,  have  made  it  a 
pleasure  to  me  to  ask  their  aid  and  counsel.  I  owe  a  special 
gratitude  to  Professor  Gardiner  for  a  ready  help  which  spared 
no  trouble  and  counted  no  cost,  and  for  the  rare  generosity 
which  placed  at  my  disposal  the  results  of  his  own  latest  and 
unpublished  researches  into  such  matters  as  the  pressing  of 
recruits  for  the  New  Model,  and  the  origin  of  the  term  Iron- 
side as  a  personal  epithet  of  Cromwell.  Mr.  Osmund  Airy 
has  very  kindly  given  me  valuable  suggestions  for  the 
Restoration  period ;  and  throughout  the  whole  work  Miss 
Norgate  has  rendered  services  which  the  most  faithful  and 
affectionate  loyalty  could  alone  have  prompted. 

ALICE  S.  GKEEN. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION. 


THE  aim  of  the  following  work  is  defined  by  its  title ;  it  is 
a  history  not  of  English  Kings  or  English  Conquests,  but  of 
the  English  people.  At  the  risk  of  sacrificing  much  that 
was  interesting  and  attractive  in  itself,  and  which  the  con- 
stant usage  of  our  historians  has  made  familiar  to  English 
readers,  I  have  preferred  to  pass  lightly  and  briefly  over  the 
details  of  foreign  wars  and  diplomacies,  the  personal  adven- 
tures of  kings  and  nobles,  the  pomps  of  courts,  or  the  in- 
trigues of  favorites,  and  to  dwell  at  length  on  the  incidents 
of  that  constitutional,  intellectual,  and  social  advance  in 
which  we  read  the  history  of  the  nation  itself.  It  is  with  this 
purpose  that  I  have  devoted  more  space  to  Chaucer  than  to 
Cressy,  to  Caxton  than  to  the  petty  strife  of  Yorkist  and 
Lancastrian,  to  the  Poor  Law  of  Elizabeth  than  to  her  vic- 
tory at  Cadiz,  to  the  Methodist  revival  than  to  the  escape  of 
the  Young  Pretender. 

Whatever  the  worth  of  the  present  work  may  be,  I  have 
striven  throughout  that  it  should  never  sink  into  a  "  drum 
and  trumpet  history."  It  is  the  reproach  of  historians  that 
they  have  too  often  turned  history  into  a  mere  record  of  the 
butchery  of  men  by  their  fellow-men.  But  war  plays  a  small 
part  in  the  real  story  of  European  nations,  and  in  that  of 
England  its  part  is  smaller  than  in  any.  The  only  war 
which  has  profoundly  affected  English  society  and  English 
government  is  the  Hundred  Years'  War  with  France,  and  of 
that  war  the  results  were  simply  evil.  If  I  have  said  little 
of  the  glories  of  Cressy,  it  is  because  I  have  dwelt  much  on 
the  wrong  and  misery  which  prompted  the  verse  of  Longland 
and  the  preaching  of  Ball.  But  on  the  other  hand,  I  have 
never  shrunk  from  telling  at  length  the  triumphs  of  peace. 
I  have  restored  to  their  place  among  the  achievements  of 
Englishmen  the  "Faerie  Queen"  and  the  "  Novum  Or- 
2  \iii 


XIV  PREFACE. 

ganum."  I  have  set  Shakespeare  among  the  heroes  of  the 
Elizabethan  age,  and  placed  the  scientific  inquiries  of  the 
Eoyal  Society  side  by  side  with  the  victories  of  the  New 
Model.  If  some  of  the  conventional  figures  of  military  and 
political  history  occupy  in  my  pages  less  than  the  space 
usually  given  them,  it  is  because  I  have  had  to  find  a  place 
for  figures  little  heeded  in  common  history — the  figures  of 
the  missionary,  the  poet,  the  printer,  the  merchant,  or  the 
philosopher. 

In  England,  more  than  elsewhere,  constitutional  progress 
has  been  the  result  of  social  development.  In  a  brief  sum- 
mary of  our  history  such  as  the  present,  it  was  impossible  to 
dwell  as  I  could  have  wished  to  dwell  on  every  phase  of  this 
development ;  but  I  have  endeavored  to  point  out,  at  great 
crises,  such  as  those  of  the  Peasant  Revolt  or  the  Rise  of  the 
New  Monarchy,  how  much  of  our  political  history  is  the 
outcome  of  social  changes  ;  and  throughout  I  have  drawn 
greater  attention  to  the  religious,  intellectual,  and  industrial 
progress  of  the  nation  itself  than  has,  so  far  as  I  remember, 
ever  been  done  in  any  previous  history  of  the  same  extent. 

The  scale  of  the  present  work  has  hindered  me  from  giv- 
ing in  detail  the  authorities  for  every  statement.  But  I 
have  prefixed  to  each  section  a  short  critical  account  of  the 
chief  contemporary  authorities  for  the  period  it  represents 
as  well  as  of  the  most  useful  modern  works  in  which  it  can  be 
studied.  As  I  am  writing  for  English  readers  of  a  general 
class  I  have  thought  it  better  to  restrict  myself  in  the  latter 
case  to  English  books,  or  to  English  translations  of  foreign 
works  where  they  exist.  This  is  a  rule  which  I  have  only 
broken  in  the  occasional  mention  of  French  books,  such  as 
those  of  Guizot  or  Mignet,  well  known  and  within  reach  of 
ordinary  students.  I  greatly  regret  that  the  publication  of 
the  first  volume  of  the  invaluable  Constitutional  History  of 
Professor  Stubbs  came  too  late  for  me  to  use  it  in  my  ac- 
count of  those  early  periods  on  which  it  has  thrown  so  great 
a  light. 

I  am  only  too  conscious  of  the  faults  and  oversights  in  a 
work  much  of  which  has  been  written  in  hours  of  weakness 
and  ill  health.  That  its  imperfections  are  not  greater  than 
they  are,  I  owe  to  the  kindness  of  those  who  have  from  time 
to  time  aided  me  with  suggestions  and  corrections ;  and 


PREPACK.  XV 

especially  to  my  dear  friend  Mr.  E.  A.  Freeman,  who  has 
never  tired  of  helping  me  with  counsel  and  criticism. 
Thanks  for  like  friendly  help  are  due  to  Professor  Stubbs 
and  Professor  Bryce,  and  in  literary  matters  to  the  Rev. 
Stopford  Brooke,  whose  wide  knowledge  and  refined  taste 
have  been  of  the  greatest  service  to  me.  I  am  indebted  to  the 
kindness  of  Miss  Thompson  for  permission  to  use  the  Genea- 
logical Tables  prefixed  to  my  work,  and  to  Mr.  Freeman  for  a 
like  permission  to  use  some  of  the  maps  in  his  "  Old  English 
History." 

The  Chronological  Annals  which  precede  the  text  will,  I 
trust;  be  useful  in  the  study  of  those  periods  where  the  course 
of  my  story  has  compelled  me  to  neglect  the  strict  chrono- 
logical order  of  succession.  In  using  this  book  as  a  school 
book,  both  teacher  and  scholar  would  do  well  to  study  them 
side  by  side  with  the  text. 


CONTENTS  OF  VOLUME  I. 

PAGE 

CHRONOLOGICAL  ANNALS xxi — XXxix 

GENEALOGICAL  TABLES . .  xli— lv 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    ENGLISH  KINGDOMS,  607 — 1013. 

Sect.   1. — Britain  and  the  English 1 

•«     2.— The  English  Conquest,  449—577 9 

•'      3.— The  Northumbrian  Kingdom,  588—685 20 

"     4.— The  Three  Kingdoms,  685—828 46 

"     5.— Wessex  and  the  Danes,  802—880  56 

"     6,— The  West-Saxon  Realm,  893—1013 67 


CHAPTER  H. 

ENGLAND  UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS,  1013 — 1204. 

Sect.   1.— The  Danish  Kings,  1013— 1042 80 

"      2.— The  English  Restoration, 1042— 1066 86 

"     3.— Normandy  and  the  Normans,  912—1066 90 

"     4.— The  Conqueror,  1042— 1066 94 

"      5.— The  Norman  Conquest,  1068—1071 103 

"     6.— The  English  Revival,  1071—1127 Ill 

"     7.— England  and  An jou,  870— 1154 124 

"     8.— Henry  the  Second,  1154—1189 132 

"     9.— Thfr  Fall  of  the  Angevins,  1189—1204 142 


xviii  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  IH. 

THE  GREAT  CHARTER,   1204 — 1265. 

PAGE 

Sect.  1. — English  Literature  under  the  Norman  and  Angevin 

Kings 148 

"     2.— John,  1204—1215 154 

"     3.— The  Great  Charter,  1215—1217 161 

"     4.— The  Universities 167 

"     5.— Henry  the  Third,  1216—1257 178 

"     6.— The  Friars 186 

"     7.— The  Barons' War,  1258— 1265 192 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  THREE  EDWARDS,   1265—1360. 

Sect.  1.— The  Conquest  of  Wales,  1265—1284 204 

"     2.— The  English  Parliament,  1283—1295 214 

"     3.— The  Conquest  of  Scotland,  1290—1305 229 

"     4.— The  English  Towns 244 

"     5.— The  King  and  the  Baronage,  1290—1327 255 

"     6.— The  Scotch  War  of  Independence,  1306—1342 267 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  HUNDRED  YEARS'  WAR,   1383—1431. 

Sect.  1.— Ed  ward  the  Third,  1336—1360 275 

"  2.— The  Good  Parliament,  1360—1377 293 

«  3.— John  Wyclif 298 

"  4.— The  Peasant  Revolt,  1377—1381 310 

"  5.— Richard  the  Second,  1381—1399 323 

"  6.— The  House  of  Lancaster,  1399—1422 335 


CONTENTS.  xix 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  NEW  MONARCHY,  1432—1540. 

PAGE 

Sect.  1.— Joan  of  Arc,  1422— 1451 344 

44     2.— The  Wars  of  the  Roses,  1450—1471  357 

"      3.— The  New  Monarchy,  1471—1509 366 

"     4.— The  New  Learning,  1509—1520 385 

"      5.— Wolsey,  1515— 1531 406 

"     6.— Thomas  Cromwell,  1530—1540 420 


CHAPTER  VIL 

THE  REFORMATION. 

Sect.  1.— The  Protestants,  1540—1553 443 

••  2.— The  Martyrs,  1553— 1558 458 

"  3.— Elizabeth,  1558— 1560 468 

"  4.— England  and  Mary  Stuart,  1560—1572 485 

44  5.— The  England  of  Elizabeth  497 

44  6.— The  Armada,  1572— 1588 515 

44  7.— The  Elizabethan  Poets 533 

"  8.— The  Conquest  of  Ireland,  1588—1610 561 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


VOLUME  I. 

QUEEN  ELIZABETH  (The  Ermine  Portrait) Frontispiece. 

After  the  Fainting  by  Zucchero,  Hatfleld  House,  England. 

PAGE 
EDITH  A  FINDS  THE  DEAD  BOOT  OP  HAROLD —  .  102 


THE  MAID  OF  ORLEANS  WOUNDED 852 


HENRY  VIII 891 

After  the  Painting  by  Hans  Holbein,  Windsor  Castle,  England. 

THE  TRIAL  OF  CATHARINE .  418 


MARY  TUDOR 458 

Painted  by  Antonio  Moro,  Prado  Museum,  Madrid. 

MARY  STUART 485 

After  an  Unknown  Painter,  Versailles  Gallery,  France. 

MARY,  QUEEN  OF  SCOTS,  HEARS  THE  DEATH-WARRANT  READ 529 


MAP  OF  BRITAIN  IN  THE  MIDST  OF  THE  ENGLISH  CONQUEST.  ...    14 

MAP  OF  ENGLAND  IN  THE  9rn  CENTURY „. . .    56 

MAP  OP  DOMINIONS  OF  THE  ANGEVINS 182 


CHRONOLOGICAL  ANNALS 

OP 

ENGLISH  HISTORY. 


THE  ENGLISH  KINGDOMS. 
449—1016. 


449  English,  land  in  Bri- 
tain. 

457  Kent  conquered  by  Eng- 
lish. 

477    Landing  of  South  Saxons. 

491     Siege  of  Anderida. 

495     Landing  of  West  Saxons. 

519  Cerdic      and      Oynric, 

Kings  of  West  Saxons. 

520  British  victory  at  Mount 

Badon. 
547     Ida    founds    kingdom    of 

Bernicia. 
552    West    Saxons     take    Old 

Sarum. 
560    JEthelberht,     King    of 

Kent,  died  616. 
568         —  driven  back  by  West 

Saxons. 
571    West  Saxons  march  into 

Mid-Britain. 

577     conquer  at  Deorham. 

584    defeated  at  Faddiley. 

588    .ZEthelric   creates  King- 
dom of  Northumbria. 
593    JEthelfrith,      King     of 

Northumbria,       died 

617. 

597    Augustine  converts  Kent. 
603    Battle  of  Daegsastan. 
613     Battle  of  Chester. 


617    Eadwine,  King  of  North- 
umbria, died  633. 

626 overlord  of  Britain. 

Penda,  King  of  the  Mer- 
cians, died  655. 

627    Eadwine    becomes   Chris- 
tian. 

633    slain  at  Hatfield. 

635    Oswald,    King    of    Ber- 
nicia, died  642. 

defeats     Welsh     at 

Hevenfeld. 

Aidan  settles  at  Holy  Is- 
land. 

Conversion  of  Wessex. 
642    Oswald  slain  at  Maserfeld. 
651     Oswiu,    King  of  North- 
umbria, died  670. 
655    Victory  at  Win  weed. 

658  West  Saxons  conquer  as 

far  as  the  Parrel. 

659  Wulfhere  King  in  Mer- 

cia. 

661     drives   West  Saxons 

over  Thames. 

664    Council  of  Wliitby. 
Ccedmon  at  Whitby. 

668     Tfieodo re  made  A rchbishop 
of  Canterbury. 

670    Ecgfrith,  King  of  North- 
umbria, died  085. 
xxi 


XXII 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


675  .SJthelred,  King  of  Mer- 
cia, died  704. 

681  Wilfrid    converts    South 

Saxons. 

682  Centwine  of  Wessex  con- 

quers Mid-Somerset. 
685    Ecgfrith     defeated     and 
slain  at  Nectansmere. 
688    Ine.  King  of  West  Saxons, 

died  726. 

715    defeats     Ceolred    of 

Mercia       at       Wan- 
borough. 

716  JEthelbald,  King  of  Mer- 

cia, died  757. 

733  Mercian  conquest  of  Wes- 
sex. 

735    Death  of  Bceda. 

753  Death  of  Boniface, 

754  Wessex  recovers  freedom 

in  battle  of  Burford. 
756    Eadberht  of  Northumbria 

takes  Alcluvd. 
758    Offa,     King    of    Mercia, 

died  796. 
775    subdues  Kentish  men 

at  Otford. 
779    defeats  West  Saxons 

at  Bensington. 

786    places    Beorhtric   on 

throne  of  Wessex. 

787    creates  Archbishopric 

at  Lichfield. 

First  landing  of  Danes  in 

England. 

796  Cenwulf,  King  of  Mercia, 
died  621. 

802  Ecgberht  becomes  King 

in  Wessex,  died  839. 

803  Cenwulf  suppresses  Arch- 

bishopric    of     Lich- 
field. 

808  Charles  the  Great  restores 
Eardwulf  in  North- 
umbria. 

815  Ecgberht  subdues  the 
West  Welsh  to  the 
Tamar. 

821     Civil  war  in  Mercia. 

825  Ecgberht  defeats  Mercians 
at  Ellandun. 

overlord  of  England 

south  of  Thames. 
Revolt    of    East     Anglia 
against  Mercia. 


827  Defeat  of  Mercians  by  East 

Anglian  s. 

828  Mercia  and  Northumbria 

submit  to  Ecgberht. 
.     Ecgberht  overlord  of  all 

English  kingdoms. 

invades  Wales. 

837    defeats  Danes  at  Hen- 

gestesdun. 
839    ^Jtholwulf,      King     of 

Wessex,  died  858. 
849     JElfred  born. 
851     Danes  defeated  at  Aclea. 
853    Alfred  sent  to  Rome. 
855    JEthelwulf  goes  to  Rome. 
857    .SJthelbald,      King     of 

Wessex,  died  860. 
86O    JEthelberht,     King    of 

Wessex,  died  866. 

866  JEthelred,  King  of  Wes- 

sex, died  871. 

867  Danes     conquer     North- 

umbria. 

868  Peace  of  Nottingham  with 

Danes. 

870  Danes  conquer  and  settle 

in  East  Anglia. 

871  Danes  invade  Wessex. 
.ZElfred,  King  of  Wessex, 

died  901. 
874    Danes  conquer  Mercia. 

876  Danes    settle    in    North- 

umbria. 

877  ZElfred   defeats  Danes  at 

Exeter. 

878  Danes  overrun  Wessex. 
ZElfred  victor  at   Eding- 

ton. 

Peace  of  Wedmore. 
883    Alfred    sends   envoys  to 

Rome  and  India. 
886    Alfred  takes  and  reforti- 

fies  London. 

893  Danes  reappear  in  Thames 

and  Kent. 

894  JElfred     drives     Hasting 

from  Wessex. 

895  Hasting  invades  Mercia. 

896  Alfred  drives  Danes  from 

Essex. 

897  Hasting    quits    Eng- 

land. 

Alfred  creates  a  fleet. 
9O1    E  ad  ward    the    Elder, 
died  925. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


912  Northmen   settle  in  Nor- 

mandy. 

913  I  JEthelflaed       conquers 
918  )         Danish  Mercia. 

921     Eadward     subdues     East 
Anglia  and  Essex. 

924    owned  as  overlord  by 

Nortliumbria,     Scots, 
and  Strathclyde. 

925  .ZEthelstan,  died  940. 

926    drives    Welsh    from 

Exeter. 

934    invades  Scotland. 

937     Victory  of  Brunanburh. 
94O    Eadmund,  died  946. 
943     Dunstan   made   Abbot  of 
Glastonbury. 

945  Cumberland     granted    to 

Malcolm,     King     of 
Scots. 

946  Eadred,  died  955. 

954    makes  Northumbria 

an  Earldom. 

955  E  ad  wig,  died  959. 


956  Banishment    of  Dun- 

stan. 

957  Revolt    of   Mercia   under 

Eadgar. 

958  Eadgar,  died  975. 

959  Dunstan    Archbishop     of 

Canterbury. 

975  Eadward  the  Martyr, 
died  978. 

978  ^Ethelred  the  Un- 
ready, died  J016. 

987     )  Fulk  the  Black,  Count  of 

1O40 )         Anjou. 

994       Invasion  of  Swein. 

1002  Massacre  of  Danes. 

1003  Swein  harries  Wessex. 

1012  Murder    of    Archbishop 

^Elfheah. 

1013  All  England  submits  to 

Swein. 
Flight  of    ^thelred    to 

Normandy. 

1016    Eadmund     Ironside, 
King,  and  dies. 


ENGLAND  UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS. 
1016—1204. 


1016    Cnut,  King,  died  1035. 

•1020    Godwine  made  Earl  of 

Wessex. 

1O27     Cnut  goes  to  Rome. 

Birth  of  William  of  Nor- 
mandy. 

1035     Harald  and  Harthacnut 
divide  England. 

1037    Harald,  King,  died  1040. 

1040    Harthacnut,      King, 
died  1042. 

1040  )  Geoff  ry  Martel,  Count  of 

1O60  \         Anjou. 

1042    Eadward     the     Con- 
fessor, died  1066. 

1045     Lanfranc  at  Be.c. 

1047    Victory   of    William  at 
Val-es-dunes. 

1051  Banishment  of  Godwine. 
William    of    Normandy 

visits  England. 

1052  Return  of  Godwine. 


1053  Death  of  Godwine. 
Harold     made     Earl    of 

West  Saxons. 

1054  William's      victory      at 

Mortemer. 

1055  Harold's  first  campaign 

in  Wales. 

1O54 )  Norman      conquest      of 
106O  |         Southern  Italy. 
1058    William's  victory  at  the 

Dive. 

106O  Normans  invade  Sicily. 
1063  Harold  conquers  Wales. 
1O66  Harold,  King. 

conquers  at  Stanford 

Bridge. 
defeated  at  Senlac  or 

Hastings. 
William  of  Normandy, 

King,  died  1087. 
1068  )  Norman     Conquest     of 
1071  \         England. 


XXIV 


CHRONOLOGICAL    ANNALS. 


1070    Reorganization     of    the 

Church. 
Lanfranc  Archbishop  of 

Canterbury. 
1075    Rising    of    Roger    Fitz- 

Osbern. 
1081    William  invades  Wales. 

1085  Failure  of  Danish  inva- 

sion. 

1086  Com  pletion  of  Domesday 

Book. 

1087  William  the  Red,  died 

1100. 

1093  Anselm,  Archbishop. 

1094  Revolt  of  Wales  against 

the  Norman  March- 
ers. 

1095  Revolt  of  Robert  de  Mow- 

bray. 

1096  Normandy  left  in  pledge 

to  William. 

1097  William  invades  Wales. 
Anselm  leaves  England. 

1098  War  with  France. 

1100  Henry  the  First,  died 

1135. 
Henry's  Charter. 

1101  Robert  of  Normandy  in- 

vades England. 
1106    Settlement  of  question  of 

investitures. 

English  Conquest  of  Nor- 
mandy. 

1109  |  Fulk  of  Jerusalem,  Count 
1129  J         of  Anjou. 

1110  War  with  France. 

1111  War  with  Anjou. 

1113  Peace  of  Gisors. 

1114  Marriage  of  Matilda  with 

Henry  V. 

1120  Wreck  of  White  Ship. 

1121  Henry's     campaign      in 

Wales. 

1123  Revolt  of  Norman  bar- 

onage. 

1124  France  and  Anjou  sup- 

Sort         William 
lito. 
1128    Matilda  married  to  Geof- 

fry  Anjou. 

Death    of    the  Clito    in 
Flanders. 

1134  Revolt  of  Wales. 

1135  Stephen  of  Blois.  died 

1154. 


1138  Normandy    repulses  the 

Angevins. 

Revolt  of  Earl  Robert. 

Battle    of     the    Stand- 
ard. 

1139  Seizure  of  the  Bishops. 
Landing  of  Matilda. 

1 141     Battle  of  Lincoln. 

1147  Birth  of  Gerald  of  Wales. 

1148  Matilda     withdraws    to 

Normandy. 

Archbishop  Theobald 
driven  into  exile. 

1149  Henry  of  Anjou  in  Eng- 

land. 

1151  Henry  becomes  Duke  of 

Normandy. 

1152  Henry   marries   Eleanor 

of  Guienne. 

1153  Henry  in  England. 

Treaty  of    Walling- 
ford. 

1154  Henry  the  Second, 

died  1189. 

1159    Expedition  against  Tou- 
louse. 

The  great  Scutage. 
1162    Thomas    made    Arch- 
bishop   of     Canter- 
bury. 

1164    Constitution  of   Claren- 
don. 

Council  of  Northampton. 
Flight    of    Archbishop 

Thomas. 

1166     Assize  of  Clarendon. 
117O    Strongbow's  invasion  of 

Ireland. 

Inquest  of  Sheriffs. 
Death     of      Archbishop 
Thomas. 

1172  Henry's  Conquest  of  Ire- 

land. 

1173  [Rebellion  of  Henry's 
1174[         sons. 

1176    Assize     of     Northamp- 
ton. 

1178    Reorganization  of  Curia 
Regis. 

1181     Assize  of  Arms. 

1189     Revolt  of  Richard. 

Richard  the  First,  died 
1199. 

1 194  |  Richard's  Crusade. 


CHRONOLOGICAL    ANNALS. 


XXV 


11 94)  War    with    Philip    Au- 

1196)         gustus. 

1194  |  Llewelyn-ap-Jorwerth  in 

1246f         North  Wales 

1197     Richard   builds  Chateau 

Gaillard. 
1199    John,  died  1216. 


1 200    John  recovers  A  n  jou  arid 

Maine. 

Layamon    writes    the 
Brut. 

1203  Murder  of  Arthur. 

1204  French  conquest  of  An- 

jou  and  Normandy. 


THE  GREAT  CHARTER. 


1204—1295. 


1205  Barons   refuse   to    fight 

for  recovery  of  Nor- 
mandy. 

1206  Stephen   Langton  Arch- 

bishop of  Canterbury. 
12O8    Innocent  III.  puts  Eng- 
land under  Interdict. 

1210  John  divides   Irish  Pale 

into  counties. 

1211  John  reduces  Llewelyn- 

ap-Jorwerth  to  sub- 
mission. 

1213  John  becomes  the  Pope's 

vassal. 

1214  Battle  of  Bo  vines. 
Birth  of  Roger  Bacon. 

1215  The  Great  Charter. 

1216  Louis  of  France  called  in 

by  the  Barons. 

1216  Henry  the  Third,  died 

1272. 

Confirmation      of      the 
Charter. 

1217  Lewis  returns  to  France. 
Charter  again  confirmed. 

1219    Hubert  de  Burgh,  Justi- 

ciar. 
1221     Friars  land  in  England. 

1223  Charter  again  confirmed 

at  London. 

1224  Revolt     of    Faukes    de 

Breaute. 

1225  Fresh     confirmation    of 

Charter. 

1228  Stephen  Langton 's  death. 

1229  Papal  exactions. 

1230  Failure  of  Henry's  cam- 

paign Poitou. 

1231  Conspiracy  against   the 

Italian  clergy. 


1232 
1237 
1238 


1242 


1246  ) 
1283  f 
1248 

1253 

1258 
1264 

1265 


1267 


1270 
1272 

1277 


1279 
1282 
1283 
1285 
1290 


Fall  of  Hubert  de  Burgh. 
Charter  again  confirmed. 
Earl  Simon  of  Leicester 

marries  Henry's  sis- 
ter. 
Defeat  of  Henry  at  Taille- 

bourg. 

Barons  refuse  subsidies. 
Llewelyn  -ap  -  Gruffydd. 
Prince  in  North  Wales. 
Irish  refusal  of  subsidies. 
Earl  Simon  in  Gascony. 
Earl  Simon  returns  to 

England. 

Provisions  of  Oxford. 
Mise  of  Amiens. 
Battle  of  Lewes. 
Commons  summoned  to 

Parliament. 
Battle  of  Evesham. 
Roger  Bacon  writes  his 

"  Opus  Majus." 
Llewelyn  -  ap  -  Gruffydd, 

owned  as  Prince  of 

Wales. 

Edward  goes  on  Crusade. 
Edward  the  First,  died 

1307. 

Edward   reduces  Llewe- 
lyn -  ap  -  Gruffydd  to 

submission. 
Statute  of  Mortmain. 
Conquest  of  Wales. 
Statute  of  Merchants. 
Statute  of  Winchester. 
Statute      "  Quia    Emp- 

tores." 

Expulsion  of  the  Jews. 
Marriage    Treaty   of 

Brigham. 


XXVI 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


1201  Parliament  of  Norham 
concerning  Scotch 
succession. 

1292    Edward    claims    appeal 

from  Scotland. 
Death  of  Roger  Bacon. 


1294  Seizure  of   Guienne   by 

Philip  of  France. 

1295  French      fleet      attacks 

Dover. 

Final  organization  of  the 
English  Parliament. 


THE  WAR  WITH  SCOTLAND  AND  FRANCE. 
1296—1485. 


1296  Edward  conquers  Scot- 

land. 

1297  Victory    of   Wallace  at 

Stirling. 

Outlawry  of  the  Clergy. 
Barons  refuse  to  serve  in 

Guienne. 

1298  Edward  conquers  Scots 

at  Falkirk. 

Truce  with  France. 
1301     Barons  demand  nomina- 
tion of  Ministers  by 
Parliament. 

Barons  exact  fresh  Con- 
firmation of  the 
Charters. 

1304  Submission  of  Scotland. 

1305  Parliament  of  Perth. 

1306  Rising  of  Robert  Bruce. 

1307  Parliament  of  Carlisle. 
Edward  the  Second, 

died  1327. 

1308  Gaveston  exiled. 

131O  The  Lords  Ordainers 
draw  up  Articles  of 
Reform. 

1312    Death  of  Gaveston . 

1314    Battle  of  Bannockburn. 

1316    Battle  of  Athenree. 

1318  Edward  accepts  the  Or- 
dinances. 

1322  Death  of  Earl  of  Lancas- 

ter.    Ordinances  an- 
nulled. 

1323  Truce  with  the  Scots . 

1324  French     attack      Aqui- 

taine. 

1325  The  Queen  and    Prince 

Edward    in  France. 

1326  Queen    lands    in    Eng- 

land. 


1327 
1328 

1329 
1330 

1332 
1333 


1335 
1336 
1336 

1337 
1338 


1339 


1340 
1341 
1342 
1346 

1347 
1348 

1349 
1351 
1351 

1353 


Deposition  of  Edward  II. 

Edward  the  Third, 
died  1877. 

Treaty  of  Northampton 
recognizes  independ- 
ence of  Scotland. 

Death  of    Robert  Bruce. 

Death  of  Roger  Mor- 
timer. 

Edward  Balliol  invades 
Scotland. 

Battle  of  Halidon  Hill. 

Balliol   does   homage  to 

Edward. 

)  Edward     invades    Scot- 
f         land. 

France    again    declares 

war. 

)  War    with   France   and 
)         Scotland. 

Edward  claims  crown  of 
France. 

Balliol  driven  from  Scot- 
land. 

Edward  attacks  France 
from  Brabant. 

Battle  of  Sluys. 
)  War    in     Britanny    and 
)         Guienne. 

Battles  of  Crecy  and 
Neville's  Cross. 

Capture  of  Calais. 

Truce  with  France. 

First  appearance  of  the 
Black  Death. 

I  Statute  of  Laborers. 


First    Statute 

sors. 
First    Statute 

munire. 


of  Provi- 
of    Pr»- 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


XXV11 


1355  Renewal  of  French  War. 

1356  Battle  of  Poitiers. 

1366  Statute  of  Kilkenny. 

1367  The    Black    Prince    vic- 

torious at  Navarete. 

1368  Wyclifs     treatise    "  De 

Dominio." 

137O    Storm  of  Limoges. 
1372    Victory  of  Spanish  fleet 

off  Rochelle. 
1374    Revolt  of  Aquitaine. 

1376  The  Good  Parliament. 

1377  Its  work  undone  by  the 

Duke  of  Lancaster. 
Wyclif  before  the  Bishop 

of  London. 
Bichard  the  Second, 

died  1399. 

1378  Gregory   XI.   denounces 

Wyclifs  heresy. 

1380  Longland's    "  Piers    the 

Ploughman." 

1381  Wyclif  s      declaration 

against  Transubstan- 
tiation. 
The  Peasant  Revolt. 

1382  Condemnation  of  Wyclif 

at  Blackfriars. 
Suppression  of  the  Poor 

Preachers. 

1384    Death  of  Wyclif. 
1386    Barons  force  Richard  to 

dismi«s  the  Earl  of 

Suffolk. 

1389    Truce  with  France. 
1394    Richard  in  Ireland. 

1396  Richard  marries  Isabella 

of  France. 

Truce  with  France  pro- 
longed. 

1397  Murder  of   the  Duke  of 

Gloucester. 

1398  Richard's  plans  of   tyr- 

anny. 

1399  Deposition  of  Richard. 
Henry    the    Fourth, 

died  1413. 

1400  Revolt  of  Owen  Glyndwr 

in  Wales. 

1401  Statute  of  Heresy. 

1402  Battle      of      Homildon 

Hill. 

1403  Revolt  of  the  Percies. 
14O3  I  French  descents  on  Eng- 
1405  \         land. 


14O5    Revolt     of     Archbishop 

Scrope. 

1407    French  attack  Gascony. 

1411     English  force  sent  to  aid 

Duke    of    Burgundy    in 

France. 

1413  Henry  the  Fifth,  died 

1422. 

1414  Lollard  Conspiracy. 

1415  Battle  of  Agincourt. 
1417    Henry      invades      Nor- 
mandy. 

1419  Alliance  with  Duke   of 

Burgundy. 

1420  Treaty  of  Troyes. 
1422    Henry  the  Sixth,  died 

1471. 
1424    Battle  of  Verneuil. 

1429  [  Siege  of  Orleans- 

1430  County      Suffrage     re- 

stricted. 

1431  Death  of  Joan  of  Arc. 
1435     Congress  of  Arras. 
1445    Marriage  of  Margaret  of 

Anjou. 

1447    Death  of  Duke  of  Glou- 
cester. 

1450  Impeachment  and  death 

of  Duke  of  Suffolk. 
Cade's  Insurrection. 
Loss  of  Normandy. 

1451  Loss  of  Guienne. 

1454  Duke   of    York    named 

Protector. 

1455  First   Battle  of   St.   Al- 

bans. 

1456  End  of  York's  Protecto- 

rate. 

1459  Failure    of   Yorkist    re- 

volt. 

1460  Battle    of    Northamp- 

ton. 
York    acknowledged    as 

successor. 
Battle  of  Wakefield. 

1461  Second  Battle  of  St.  Al- 

bans. 
Battle     of      Mortimer's 

Cross. 
Edward  the  Fourth, 

died  1483. 
Battle  of  Towton. 
1461  [Warwick      the      King- 
1471  f         maker. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  ANNALS. 


1464    Edward    marries    Lady 
Grey. 

1470  Warwick     driven    to 

France. 

Flight    of    Edward     to 
Flanders. 

1471  Battles   of    Barnet   and 

Tewkesbury. 
1475    Edward  invades  France. 


1476    Caxton    settles   in  Eng- 
land. 
1483    Murder  of  Edward  the 

Fifth. 
Richard    the    Third, 

died  1485. 

Buckingham's  Insurrec- 
tion. 
1485    Battle  of  Bosworth. 


THE  TUDORS. 


1485—1603. 


1485    Henry  the   Seventh, 
died  1509. 

1487    Conspiracy  of    Lambert 
Simnel. 

149O    Treaty  with   Ferdinand 
and  Isabella. 

1492    Henry  invades  France. 

1497    Cornish  rebellion. 

Perkin     Warbeck     cap- 
tured. 

1497    Sebastian  Cabot  lands  in 
America. 

1499    Colet  and    Erasmus    at 
Oxford. 

1501  Arthur    Tudor    marries 

Catharine  of  Aragon. 

1502  Margaret  Tudor  marries 

James  the  Fourth. 
1505    Colet  Dean  of  S.  Paul's. 
1509    Henry    the    Eighth, 

died  1547. 
1509    Erasmus      writes      the 

"Praise  of  Folly." 

1512  War  with  France. 

1513  Battles  of  the  Spurs  and 

of  Flodden. 

Wolsey    becomes    chief 
Minister. 

1516  More's  "  Utopia." 

1517  Luther  denounces  Indul- 

fences. 
of  Cloth  of  Gold. 
Luther  burns  the  Pope's 
Bull. 

1521  Quarrel  of  Luther  with 

Henry  the  Eighth. 

1522  Renewal  of  French  War. 


1523    Wolsey  quarrels  with  the 
Commons. 

1525  Exaction     of     Benevo- 

lences defeated. 
Peace  with  France. 
Tyndale  translates  the 

New  Testament. 

1526  Henry  resolves  on  a  Di- 

vorce. Persecution 
of  Protestants. 

1529    Fall  of  Wolsey.  Ministry 
of  Norfolk  and  More. 

1531  King    acknowledged    as 

"Supreme  Head  of 
the  Church  of  Eng- 
land." 

1532  Statute  of  Appeals. 

1534  Acts  of  Supremacy  and 

Succession.    - 

1535  Cromwell  Vicar-General. 
Death  of  More. 
Overthrow  of  the  Geral- 

dines  in  Ireland. 

1536  Dissolution      of     lesser 

Monasteries. 

1537  Pilgrimage  of  Grace. 

1538  English  Bible  issued. 

1539  Execution     of      Lord 

Exeter. 

Law  of  Six  Articles. 
Suppression    of    greater 

Abbeys. 

1542     Completion  of  the  Tudor 
Conquest  of  Ireland. 
1544    War  with  France. 
1547    Execution   of    Ead    of 
Surrey. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


XXIX 


1C47    Edward    the    Sixth, 

died  1553. 

Battle  of  Pinkie  Cleugh. 

Suppression  of  Chant- 
ries. 

1548  English  Bo^kof  Common 

Prayer. 

1549  Western  Rebellion.    End 

of    Somerset's     Pro- 
tectorate. 
1551     Death  of  Somerset. 

1553  Mary,  died  1558. 
Chancellor    discovers 

Archangel. 

1554  Mary  marries  Philip  of 

Spain. 

England  absolved  by 
Cardinal  Pule. 

1555  Persecution    of    Protest- 

ants begins. 

1556  "Burning  of    Archbishop 

Cranmer. 

1557  War  with  France. 

1558  Loss  of  Calais. 
Elizabeth,  died  1603. 

1559    restores    Royal    Su- 
premacy and  English 
Prayer  Book. 

1560  War  in  Scotland. 

1561  Mary    Stuart    lands   in 

Scotland. 

1562  Rebellion      of      Shane 

O'Neill  in  Ulster. 

1562  Elizabeth       supports 

French     Huguenots. 

Hawkins     begins    Slave 

Trade  with    Africa. 

1563  First     penal     statute 

against  Catholics. 

English  driven  out  of 
Havre. 

Thirty-nine  Articles  im- 
posed on  clergy. 

1565  Mary  marries  Darnley. 

1566  Darnley     murders    Riz- 

zio. 
Royal  Exchange  built. 

1567  Murder  of  Darnley. 
Defeat     and     death    of 

Shane  O'Neill. 
1508     Mary  flies  to  England. 

1569  Revolt  of  the  northern 

Earls. 

1570  Bull  of  Deposition  pub- 

lished. 


1571  Conspiracy  and  death  of 

Norfolk. 

1572  Rising  of  the  Low  Coun- 

tries against  Alvu. 
Cartwright's    "  Admoni- 
tion   to    the  Parlia- 
ment." 

1575  Queen     refuses    Nether- 

lands. 

1576  First  public   Theater  in 

Bluckfriurs. 

Landing  of  the  Seminary 
Priests. 

1577  Drake  sets  sail  for  the 

Pacific. 

1579  Lyly's  "  Enphues." 
Spenser       publishes 

"Shepherd's     Calen- 
dar." 

1580  Campian  and  Parsons  in 

England. 

Revolt  of  the  Desmonds. 
Massacre  of  Smei  wick. 

1583  Plots  to  assassinate  Eliza- 

beth. 

New  powers  given  to  Ec- 
clesiastical Commis- 
sion. 

1584  Murder    of    Prince    of 

Orange. 
Armada  gathers  in   the 

Tagus. 
Colonization  of  Virginia. 

1585  English    Army    sent    to 

Netherlands. 
Drake    on    the    Spanish 
Coast. 

1586  Battle  of  Zutphen. 
Babington's  Plot. 

1587  Shakspere  in  London. 
Death  of  Mary  Stuart. 
Drake      bnrris      Spanish 

fleet  at  Cadiz. 
Marlowe's    "  Tambur- 
.laine." 

1588  Defeat  of  the  Armada. 
Martin     Mar  prelate 

Trcicfs. 

1589  Drake  plunders  Corunna. 
1 5  9O    Publication  of  Hi  e '  'Faerie 

Queen." 
1593    Shakspere's  "  Venus  and 

Adonis." 
1504    Hooker's  "  Ecclesiastical 

Polity." 


XXX 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


1598    Jonson's  ' '  Every  Man  in 

/it's  Humour." 
Descent  upon  Cadiz. 

1597  Ruin     of     the     Second 

Armada 
Bacon's  "  Essays." 

1598  Revolt  of  Hugh  O'Neill. 


1599    Expedition    of    Earl   of 
Essex  in  Ireland. 

16O1    Execution  of  Essex. 

1603    Mountjoy  completes  the 
conquest    of    Ire- 
land. 
Death  of  Elizabeth. 


THE  STUARTS. 

1603—1688. 

1603 

James  the  First,    died 

1621 

1623. 

Millenary  Petition. 

1604 

Parliament      claims     to 

deal       with       both 

1623 

C.  lurch  and  State. 

Hampton  Court  Confer- 

1624 

ence. 

1805 

Gunpowder  Plot. 

1625 

Bacons    "  Advancement 

of  Learning." 

1610 

Parliament's  Petition  of 

Grievances. 

Plantation  of  Ulster. 

1613 

Marriage  of  the  Elector 

1626 

Palatine. 

1614 

First  quarrels  with  the 

Parliament. 

1627 

1616 

Trial    of    the    Earl    and 

Countess  of   Somer- 

set. 

Dismissal  of  Chief  Jus- 

1628 

tice  Coke. 

1617 

Death  of  Shakspere. 
Bacon  Lord  Keeper. 

1629 

Proposals  fortlie  Spanish 

Marriage. 

The       Declaration       of 

Sports. 

1617 

)  Expedition  and  death  of 

1618 

f         Ralegh. 

1630 

1618 

Beginning      of      Thirty 

Years'  War. 

1633 

1620 

Invasion  of  the  Palatin- 

ate. 

Landing  of  the  Pilgrim- 

Fathers  in  New  Eng- 

land. 

1621 

Bacon's    "  Novum    O- 

ganum." 

Impeachment  of  Bacon. 

James  tears  out  the  Pro- 
testation of  the 
Commons. 

Journey  of  Prince 
Charles  to  Madrid. 

Resolve  of  War  against 
Spain. 

Charles  the  First,  died 
5649. 

First  Parliament  dis- 
solved. 

Failure  of  expedition 
against  Cadiz. 

Buckingham  impeached. 

Second  Parliament  dis- 
solved. 

Levy  of  Benevolence  and 
Forced  Loan. 

Failure  of  expedition  to 
Rochelle. 

The  Petition  of  Right. 

Murder  of  Buckingham. 

Land  Bishop  of  London. 

Dissolution  of  Third  Par- 
liament. 

Charter  granted  to  Massa- 
chusetts. 

Wentworth  Lord  Presi- 
dent of  the  North. 

Puritan  Emigration  to 
New  England. 

Wentworth  Lord  Deputy 
in  Ireland. 

Laud  Archbishop  of 'Can- 
terbury. 

Milton's  "  Allegro  "  and 
"  Penseroso."1 

Prynne's  "  His  trio-mas- 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


XXXI 


1634    Milton's  "  Comus." 

1636  Juxon  Lord  Treasurer. 
Book  of  Canons  and  Com- 
mon   Praj  er    issued 
for  Scotland. 

Hampilen  refuses  to  pay 
Ship-money. 

1637  Revolt  of  Edinburgh. 
Trial  of  Hampden. 

1638  Milton'*  "  Lycidas." 
The  Scotch  Covenant. 

1639  Leslie  at  Dunse  Law. 
Pacification  of  Berwick. 

1640  Tlie  Short  Parliament. 
The  Bishops'  War. 
Great  Council   of  Peers 

at  York. 

Long  Parliament  meets, 
Nov. 

Pym  leader  of  the  Com- 
mons. 

1641  Execution  of  Strafford, 

May. 

Charles  visits  Scotland. 

Hyde  organizes  Royalist 
party. 

The  Irish  Massacre.  Oct. 

The  Grand  Remon- 
strance, Nov. 

1642  Impeachment    of    Five 

Members,  Jan. 
Charles      before     Hull, 

April. 
Royalists  withdraw  from 

Parliament. 
Charles  raises  standard 

at  Nottingham,  Au- 
gust 22. 
Battle  of  Edgehill,  Oct. 

23. 
Hobbes  writes   the    "  De 

Cite." 

1643  Assembly  of  Divines  at 

Westminster. 

Rising  of  the  Cornish- 
men.  May. 

Deatli  of  Hampden,  June. 

Battle  of  Roundway 
Down,  July. 

Siege  of  Gloucester,  Aug. 

Death  of  Falkland,  Sept. 

Charles  negotiates  with 
Irish  Catholics. 

Taking  of  the  Covenant, 
Sept.  25. 


1644  Fight    at     Cropredy 

Bridge,  June. 

Battle  of  Mansion  Moor, 
July  2. 

Surrendt- r  of  Parliamen- 
tary Army  in  Corn- 
wall. Sept.  2. 

Battle  of  Tippermuir, 
Sept.  2. 

Battle  of  Newbury.  Cct. 

Milton's  "Areopagitica.'" 

1645  Self-Denying  Ordinance, 

April. 

New  Model  Raised. 
Battle  of  Naseby,  June 

14 
Battle    of    Philiphaugh, 

Sept. 

1646  Charles    surrenders     to 

the  Scots.  May. 

1647  Scots  surrender  Charles 

to  the  Houses,  Jan. 

80. 
Army  elects   Agitators, 

April. 
The  King  seized  at  Holm- 

by  House,  June. 
"  Humble      Representa- 
tion"  of  the  Army, 

June. 
Expulsion  of  the  Eleven 

Members. 
Army  occupies  London, 

Aug. 

Flight  of  the  King,  Nov. 
Secret  Treaty  ofChnrles 

with  the  Scots,  Dec. 

1648  Outbreak  of  the  Royalist 

Revolt.  Feb. 
Revolt  of  the  Fleet,  and 

of  Kent.  May. 
Fairfax  and  Cromwell  in 

Essex    and    Wales, 

June — July. 
Battle  of  Preston,  Aug. 

17. 
Surrender  of  Colchester, 

Aug.  27. 

Pride's  Purge,  Dec. 
Royal   Society  begins  at 

Oxford. 

1649  Execution  of  Charles  I., 

Jan.  30. 

Scotland  proclaims 
Charles  II.  King. 


xxxn 


CHRONOLOGICAL  ANNALS. 


1649  England  proclaims  itself 

jv  Commonwealth. 
Cromwell    storms    Dro- 
gheda,  Sept.  11. 

1650  Cromwell    enters    Scot- 

land. 
Battle  of  Dunba,r,Sept.  3. 

1651  Battle      of     Worcester, 

Sept.  3. 
Hobbes's  "  Leviathan." 

1652  Union  with  Scotland. 
Outbreak  of  Dutch  War, 

May. 
Victory  of  Tromp.  Nov. 

1653  Victory  of  Blake,  Feb. 
Cromwell  drives  out  the 

Parliament,  A  pril  9,0. 

Constituent  Convention 
(Bare  bones  Parlia- 
ment), July. 

Convention  dissolves, 
Dec. 

The  Instrument  of  Gov- 
ernment. 

Oliver  Cromwell, 
Lord  Prot  e  c  t  o  r , 
died  1658. 

1654  Peace    concluded   with 

Holland. 

First  Protectorate  Par- 
liament, Sept. 

1655  Dissolution    of  the  Par- 

liament. Jan. 

The  Major-Generals. 

Settlement  of  Scotland 
and  Ireland. 

Settlement  of  the 
Church. 

Blake  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean. 

War  with  Spain  and  Con- 
quest of  Jamaica. 

1656  Secon  d  Protectorate  Par- 

liament,  Sept. 

1657  Blake's  victory  at  Santa 

Cruz. 
Cromwell  refuses  title  of 

King. 
Act  of  Government. 

1658  Parliament  dissolved, 

Feb. 

Battle  of  the  Dunes. 
Capture  of  Dunkirk. 
Death  of  Cromwell, 

Sept.  3. 


1658  Richard      Cromwell, 

Lord  Protector, 

died  1712. 

1659  Third  Protectorate  Par- 

liament. 

Parliament  dissolved. 

Long  Parliament  re- 
called. 

Long  Parliament  again 
driven  out. 

1660  Monk  enters  London. 
The  "  Convention  "  Par- 
liament. 

Charles  the  Second, 
lands  at  Do-ver,  hay, 
died  1C85. 

Union  of  Scotland  and 
Ireland  undone. 

1661  Cavalier  Parliament  be- 

gins. 

1662  Act  of    Uniformity    re- 

enacted. 
Puritan    clergy    driven 

out. 
Royal  Society  at  London. 

1663  Dispensing  Bill  fails. 

1664  Conventicle  Act. 

1665  Dutch  War  begins. 
Five  Mile  Act. 
Plague  of  London. 
Newton's  Theory  of  Flux- 
ions. 

1666  Fire  of  London. 

1667  The  Dutcli  in  the  Med- 

way. 

Dismissal  of   Clarendon. 
Peace  of  Breda. 
Lewis  attacks   Flanders. 
Milton's      "  Paradise 
Lost." 

1668  The  Triple  Alliance. 
Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle 
Ashley      shrinks      back 

from    toleration    to 
Catholics. 

1670  Treaty  of  Dover. 
Bunyaris  "  P  i  I  g  r  i  m '« 

Progress  "  uritten. 

1671  Milton's  "  Paradise  Re- 

gained "  and  "  Sam- 
son Agonistes." 
Newton's      Theory       of 
Light. 

1672  Closing    of    the    Exche- 

quer. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


XXXIU 


1672  Declaration     of    Indul- 

gence. 

War  begins  with  Hol- 
land. 

Ashley  made  Chancellor. 

1673  Declaration     of     Indul- 

gence withdrawn. 
The  Test  Act. 
Shaftesbury  dismissed. 
Shat'tesbury    takes    the 

lead  of  the  Country 

Party. 

1674  Bill  of  Protestant  Securi- 

ties fails. 
Charles     makes     Peace 

with  Holland. 
Danby  Lord  Treasurer. 

1675  Treaty  of  mutual  aid  be- 

tween  Charles    and 
Lewis. 

1677  Shaftesbury  sent  to  the 

Tower. 

Bill  for  Security  of  the 
Church  fails. 

Address  of  the  Houses 
for  War  with  France. 

Prince  of  Orange  mar- 
ries Mary. 

1678  Peace  of  Nimeguen. 
Gates  invents  the  Popish 

Plot. 

1679  New  Parliament  .meets. 
Fall  of  Danby. 

New  Ministry  with 
Shaftesbury  at  its 
head. 

Temple's  plan  for  a  new 
Council. 

Habeas  Corpus  Act 
passed. 

Exclusion  Bill  intro- 
duced. 

Parliament  dissolved. 

Shaftesbury  dismissed. 

1680  Committee  for  agitation 

formed. 

Monmouth  pretends  to 
the  throne. 

Petitioners  and  Abhor- 
rers. 

Exclusion  Bill  thrown 
out  by  the  Lords. 

Trial  of  Lord  Staf- 
ford. 


1681  Parliament  at  Oxford. 
Treaty  with  France. 
Limitation  Bill  rejected. 
Shaftesbury    and    Mon- 
mouth arrested. 

1682  Conspiracy  and  flight  of 

Shaftesbury. 
Penn       founds       Penn- 
sylvania. 

1683  Death  of  Shaftesbury. 
Rye-house  Plot. 
Executijn  of  Lord  Rus- 
sell  and    Algernon 
Sidney. 

1684  Town  charters  quashed. 
Army  increased. 

1685  James    the     Second, 

died  1701. 
Insurrection  of    Argyll 

and  Monmouth. 
Battle     of    Sedgemoor, 

July  (3. 

The  Bloody  Circuit. 
Army   raised    to  20,000 

men. 
Revocation  of  Edict  of 

Nantes. 

1686  Test  Act  dispensed  with 

by  royal  author- 
ity. 

Ecclesiastical  Commis- 
sion set  up. 

1687  Newton's  "  Principia." 
Expulsion  of  the  Fellows 

of  Magdalen. 

Dismissal  of  Lords  Roch- 
ester and  Claren- 
don. 

Declaration  of  Indul- 
gence. 

The  Boroughs  regu- 
lated. 

William  of  Orange  pro- 
tests against  the 
Declaration. 

Tyrconnell  made  Lord 
Deputy  in  Ireland. 

1688  Clergy    refuse    to    read 

the  new  Declaration 
of  Indulgence. 

Birth  of  James's  son. 

Invitation  to  Willinm. 

Trial  of  the  Seven 
Bishops. 


XXXIV 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


1688.  Irish  troops  brought  over 

to  England. 
Lewis  attacks  Germany. 


1688    William  of  Orange  lands 

at  Torbay. 
Flight  of  James. 


MODERN  ENGLAND. 


1689—1874. 


1689  Convention  Parliament. 
Declaration  of  Rights. 
William    and     Mary 

made  King  and 
Queen. 

William  forms  the 
Grand  Alliance 

against  Lewis. 

Battle  of  Killiecrankie, 
July  27. 

Siege  of  Londonderry. 

Mutiny  Bill. 

Toleration  Bill. 

Bill  of  Rights. 

Secession  of  the  Non- 
jurors. 

1690  Abjuration  Bill  and  Act 

of  Grace. 
Battle  of  Beachy  Head, 

June  30. 
Battle     of    the    Boyne, 

July  1. 
William  repulsed  from 

Limerick. 

1691  Battle  of  Aughrim,  July. 
Capitulation  and  Treaty 

of  Limerick. 

1692  Massacre  of  Glencoe. 
Battle    of    La     Hogue, 

May  19. 

1693  Sunderland's   plan   of  a 

Ministry. 

1694  Bank  of  England  set  up. 
Death  of  Mary. 

1696  Currency  restored. 

1697  Peace  of  Ryswick. 

1698  First  Partition  Treaty. 

1700  Second  Partition  Treaty. 

1701  Duke  of  Anjou  becomes 

King  of  Spain. 
Act        of      Settlement 

passed. 
Death  of  James  II. 

1702  Anne,  died  1714. 


1704 

1705 
1706 
1707 
1708 


1709 
1710 


1712 

1713 
1714 


1715 

1716 
1717 


1718 
1720 


1721 
1723 
1727 

1729 


Battle      of     Blenheim, 
August  \'6. 

Harley  and  St.  John  take 
office. 

Victories  of  Peterborough 
in  Spain. 

Battle       of      Ramillies, 
May  23. 

Act  of  Union  with  Scot- 
land. 

Dismissal  of  Harley  and 
St.  John. 

Battle  of  Oudenarde. 

Battle  of  Malplaquet. 

Trial  of  Sacheverell. 

Tory  Ministry  of  Harley 
and  St.  John. 

Dismissal      of      Marl- 
borough. 

Treaty  of  Utrecht. 

George      the     First, 
died  1727. 

Ministry  of  Townshend 
and  Walpole. 

Jacobite     Revolt    under 
Lord  Mar. 

The  Septennial  Bill. 

The  Triple  Alliance. 

Ministry  of  Lord  Stan- 
hope. 

The  Quadruple  Alliance. 

Failure  of  the  Peerage 
Bill. 

The    South    Sea     Com- 
pany. 

Ministry  of  Sir   Robert 
Walpole. 

Exile    of  Bishop  Atter- 
bury. 

War   with   Austria  and 
Spain. 

George   the   Second, 
died  1760. 

Treaty  of  Seville. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


1730  Free      exportation      of 

American     rice   al- 
lowed. 

1731  Treat v  of  Vienna. 
1733    Walpole's  Excise  Bill. 

War  of  the  Polish  Suc- 
cession. 

Family  compact  be- 
tween France  and 
Spain. 

1737  Death    of    Queen  Caro- 

line. 

1738  The  Methodists  appear  in 

London. 

1739  War       declared      with 

Spain. 

1740  War     of    the    Austrian 

Succession. 

1742  Resignation  of  Walpole. 

1743  Battle      of      Dettingen, 

June  27. 

1745  Ministry  of  Henry  Pel- 

ham. 
Battle     of      Fontenoy, 

Mny  81. 
Charles  Edward  lands  in 

Scotland. 
Battle  of    Prestonpans, 

Sept.  21. 
Charles  Edward  reaches 

Derby,  Dec.  7. 

1746  Battle        of       Falkirk, 

Jan.  23. 
Battle       of      Culloden, 

April  16. 

1748    Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle. 
1751     Clive's  surprise  of  Arcot. 

1754  Death  of  Henry  Pelham. 
Ministry     of     Duke    of 

Newcastle. 

1755  The  Seven  Years' War. 
Defeat  of  General  Brad- 
dock. 

1756  Loss  of  Port  Mahon. 
Rttreat      of      Admiral 

Byng. 

1757  Convention    of    Closter- 

Seven. 

Ministry  of  William  Pitt. 
Battle        of       Plassey, 

June  23. 

1758  Capture     of     Louisburg 

and  Cape  Breton. 
Capture     of     Fort   Du- 
quesne. 


1759  Battle  of   Minden,    Au- 

gust 1. 

Capture  of  Fort  Niagara 
and  Ticonderoga. 

Wolfe's  victory  on 
Heights  of  Abra- 
ham. 

Battle  of  Quiberon  Bay, 
Nov.  20. 

1760  George    the     Third, 

died  1820. 
Battle  of  Wandewash. 

1761  Pitt  resigns  office. 
Ministry  of  Lord  Bute. 
Brin  dley's     Canal    over 

the  In/cell. 

1763  Peace  of  Paris. 
Ministry      of       George 

Grenville. 

Wedgu-cod  establishes 
potteries. 

1764  First  expulsion  of  Wilkes 

from  House  of  Com- 
mons. 

Hargreaves  invents 

Spinning  Jenny. 

1765  Stamp  Act  passed. 
Ministry  of  Lord  Rock- 

ingham. 
Meeting  and  Protest  of 

American  Congress. 
Watt     invents      Steam 

Enqine. 

1766  Repeal    of    the    Stamp 

Act. 

Ministry  of  Lord  Chat- 
ham. 

1768  Ministry  of  the  Duke  of 

Graf  ton. 

Second  expulsion  of 
Wilkes. 

Arlcwright  invents  Spin- 
ning Machine. 

1769  Wilkes       three       times 

elected  for  Middle- 
sex. 

House  of  Commons  seats 
Col.  Luttrell. 

Occupation  of  Boston  by 
British  troops. 

Letters  of  Junius. 

1770  Chatham's    proposal     of 

Parliamentary     Re- 
form. 
Ministry  of  Lord  North. 


XXX  VI 


CHRONOLOGICAL   ANNALS. 


1771  Last  attempt  to  prevent 
Parliamentary  re- 
porting. 

Beginning  of  the  great 
English  Journals. 

1773  Hastings  appointed  Gov- 

ernor-General. 
Boston  tea -riots. 

1774  Military    occupation    of 

Boston. 

Its  port  closed. 
Massachusetts     Charter 

altered. 
Congress    assembles   at 

Philadelphia. 

1775  Rejection    of  Chatham's 

plan  of  concilia- 
tion. 

Skirmish  at  Lexington. 

Americans,  under  Wash- 
ington, besiege  Bos- 
ton. 

Battle  of  Bunker's  Hill. 

Southern  Colonies  expel 
their  Governors. 

1776  Crompton     invents     the 

Mule. 

Arnold  invades  Canada. 

Evacuation  of  Boston. 

Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, July  4. 

Battles  of  Brooklyn  and 
Trenton. 

Adam  Smith's  "  Wealth 
of  Nations." 

1777  Battle  of  Brandywine. 
Surrender  of   Saratoga, 

Oct.  17. 

Chatham  proposes  Fed- 
eral Union. 

Washington  at  Valley 
Forge. 

1778  Alliance   of  France  and 

Spain    with  United 
States. 
Death  of  Chatham. 

1779  Siege  of  Gibraltar. 
Armed     Neutrality     of 

Northern  Powei's. 
The  Irish  Volunteers. 

1780  Capture  of  Charlestown. 
Descent  of  Hyder  Ali  on 

the  Oarnatic. 

1781  Defeat  of  Hyder  at  Porto 

Novo. 


1781  Surrender  of  Cornwallis 

at  Yorktown. 

1782  Ministry  of  Lord   Rock- 

ingham. 

Victories  of  Rodney. 

Repeal  of  Poynings'  Act. 

Pitt's  Bill  tor  Parliamen- 
tary Reform. 

Burke's  Bill  of  Economi- 
cal Reform. 

Shelburne  Ministry. 

Repulse  of  Allies  from 
Gibraltar. 

1783  Treaties    of    Paris    and 

Versailles. 
Coalition     Ministry     of 

Fox  and  North. 
Fox's  India  Bill. 
Ministry  of  Pitt. 

1784  Pitt's  India  Bill. 
Financial  Reforms. 

1785  Parliamentary     Reform 

Bill. 

Free  Trade  Bill  between 
Eng  land  and  Ireland. 

1786  Trial  of    Warren  Hast- 

ings. 

1787  Treaty  of  Commerce  with 

France. 

1788  The  Regency  Bill. 

1789  Meeting    of    States-Gen- 

eral at  Versailles. 

New  French  Constitu- 
tion. 

Triple  Alliance    for  de- 
fense of  Turkey. 
1 7  9O    Quarrel   over   Nootka 
Sound. 

Pitt  defends  Poland. 

Burke's  ' '  Reflections  on 
the  French  Revolu- 
tion." 

1791  Representative    Govern- 

ment set  up  in  Can- 
ada. 

Fox's  Libel  Act. 

Burke's  "  Appeal  from 
the  New  to  the  Old 
Whigs." 

1792  Pitt     hinders    Holland 

from    joining    the 

Coalition. 

France  opens  the  Scheldt. 
Pitt's  efforts  for  peace. 
The  United  Irishmen, 


CHRONOLOGICAL  ANNALS. 


XXXV11 


1793  France  declares  War  on 

England. 

Part  of  Whigs  join  Pitt. 
English  army  lands    in 

Flanders. 
English    driven    from 

Toulon. 

1794  English  driven  from  Hol- 

land. 
Suspension    of     Habeas 

Corpus  Act. 
Victory  of  Lord  Howe, 

June  1. 

1796  Bnrke's  "Letters    on    a 

Regicide  Peace." 

1797  England    alone     in    the 

War  with  France. 

B;ittle  of   Camperdown. 

Battle  of  Cape  St.  Vin- 
cent. 

1798  Irish    revolt    crushed  at 

Vinegar  Hill. 
Battle  of  the  Nile. 

1799  Pitt  revives  the  Coalition 

against  France. 
Conquest  of  Mysore. 

1800  Surrender    of    Malta   to 

English  Fleet. 

Armed  Neutrality  of 
Northern  Powers. 

Act  of  Union  with  Ire- 
land. 

1801  George  the  Third  rejects 

Pitt's  Plan  of  Catho- 
lic Emancipation. 

Administration  of  Mr. 
Addington. 

S  n  r  render  of  French 
army  in  Egypt. 

Battle  of  Copenhagen. 

1802  Peace  of  Amiens. 
Publii-ation    of   "  Edin- 
burgh Review." 

1803  War     declared     against 

Buonaparte. 
Battle  of  Assaye. 

1804  Second  Ministry  of  Pitt. 

1805  Battle  of  Trafalgar,  Oct. 

21. 

1806  Death  of  Pitt,  Jan.  23. 
Ministry  of  Lord  Gren- 

ville. 
Death  of  Fox. 

1807  Orders  in  Council. 
Abolition  of  Slave  Trade. 


1807  Ministry    of     Duke     of 

Portland. 
Seizure  of  Danish  Fleet. 

1808  Battle    of  Vimiera,  and 

Convention  of   Cin- 
tra. 

1809  America  passes  Non-In- 

tercourse Act. 

Battle  of  Corunna,  Jan. 
16. 

Wellesley  drives  Soult 
from  Oporto. 

Battle  of  Talavera,  July 
28. 

Expedition  against  Wal- 
clieren. 

Ministry  of  Spencer  Per- 
ceval. 

Revival  of  Parliament- 
ary Reform. 

1810  Battle  of  Busaco. 
Liues  of  Torres  Vedras. 

1811  Prince  of  Wales  becomes 

Regent. 
Battle  of  Fuentes  d'On- 

ore,  May  5. 
Luddite  Riots. 

1812  Assassination  of  Spencer 

Perceval. 

Ministry  of  Lord  Liver- 
pool. 
Storm   of   Ciudad    Rod- 

rigo  and  Badajoz. 
America    declares    War 

against  England. 
Battle     of     Salamanca, 

July  22. 
Wellington  retreats  from 

Burgos. 
Victories    of    American 

Frigates. 

1813  Battle  of  Vitoria.June  21. 
Battles  of  the  Pyrenees. 
Wellington    ent  ers 

France,  Oct. 

Americans  attack  Can- 
ada. 

1814  Battle  of  Orthes. 
Battle  of  Toulouse,  April 

10. 

Battle  of  Chippewa,  July. 

Raid  upon  Washington. 

British  repulses  at  Platts- 
burg  and  New  Or- 
leans. 


XXXV111 


CHRONOLOGICAL  ANNALS. 


1815    Battle    of   Quatre    Bras, 

June  16. 
Battle  of  Waterloo,  June 

18. 
Treaty  of  Vienna. 

1819  Mane i tester  Massacre. 

1820  Cato  Street  Conspiracy. 
George   the    Fourth, 

died  1830. 

Bill  for  the  Queen's  Di- 
vorce. 

1822  Canning   Foreign  Minis- 

ter. 

1823  Mr.  Huskisson  joins  the 

Ministry. 

1823    Expedition  to  Portugal. 
Recognition    of    South 
American  States. 

1827  Ministry    of     Mr.     Can- 

ning. 
Ministry  of  Lord  Gode- 

rich. 
Battle  of  Navarino. 

1828  Ministry  of  Duke  of  Wel- 

lington. 

1829  Catholic     Emancipation 

Bill. 

1830  William  the  Fourth, 

died  1837. 

Ministry  of  Lord  Grey. 
Opening  of  Liverpool  and 

Manchester  Railway. 

1831  Reform  Agitation. 

1832  Parliamentary    Reform 

Bill    passed,    June 
7. 

1833  Suppression  of    Colonial 

Slavery. 

East  Indian  trade  thrown 
open. 

1834  Ministry    of    Lord   Mel- 

bourne. 

New  Poor  Law. 

System  of  National  Edu- 
cation begun. 

Ministry  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel. 

1835  Ministry    of    Lord    Mel- 

bourne replaced. 
Municipal     Corporation 

Act. 
1838    General    Registration 

Act. 

Civil  Marriages  Act. 
1837  Victoria. 


1838  Formation  of  Anti-Corn- 

Law  League. 

1839  Committee    of    Privy 

Council  for  Educa- 
tion instituted. 

Demands  for  a  People's 
Charter. 

Revolt  in  Canada. 

War  with  China. 

Occupation  of  Cabul. 

1840  Quadruple  Alliance  with 

France,  Portugal  and 
Spain. 
Bombardment  of  Acre. 

1841  Ministry    of    Sir   Robert 

Peel. 

1842  Income  Tax  revived. 
Peace  with  China. 
Massacre  of  English  Ar- 
my in  Afghanistan. 

Victories  of   Pollock  in 

Afghanistan. 
Annexation  of  Scinde. 

1845  Battles  of   iMcodkee  and 

Ferozeshah. 

1846  Battle  of  Sobraon. 

R  ep  e  a  1    of    the    Corn 

Laws. 
Ministry  of    Lord  John 

Russell.  . 

1848  Suppression  of  the  Chart- 

ists and  Irish  rebels. 

1849  Victory  of  Goojerat. 
Annexation  of  the  Pun- 

jaub. 

1852    Ministry  of  Lord  Derby. 
Ministry  of  Lord  Aber- 
deen. 

1854  Alliance     with     France 

against  Russia. 
Siege  of  Sebastopol. 
Battle  of  Inkermann, 

ATov.  5. 

1855  Ministry  of  Lord  Palmer- 

ston. 
Capture  of  Sevastopol. 

1856  Peace  of  Paris  with  Rus- 

sia. 

1857  Sepoy  Mutiny  in  Bengal. 

1858  Sovereignty    of    India 

transferred    to    the 

Crown. 

Volunteer  movement. 
Second  Ministry  of  Lord 

Derby. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  ANNALS. 


XXXIX 


1859  Second  Ministry  of  Lord 
Palmerston. 

1885  Ministry  of  Lord  Rus- 
sell. 

1866  Third  Ministry  of  Lord 
Derby. 

1887  Parliamentary  Reform 
Bill. 

1868  Ministry  of  Mr.  Disraeli. 
Ministry  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone. 


1869  Disestablishment  of  Epis- 

copal Church  in  Ire- 
land. 

1870  Irish  Land  Bill. 
Education  Bill. 

1871  Abolition     of     religious 

tests  in  Universities. 
Army  Bill. 

1872  Ballot  Bill. 

1874    Second   Ministry  of  Mr. 
Disraeli. 


GENEALOGICAL  TABLES. 


xliv 


GENEALOGICAL   TABLES. 


DUKES  OF  THE  NORMANS. 


HROLF, 

1st  Duke  of  the  Normans, 
r.  911-1J27. 

WILLIAM 

LONOSWORD, 

r.  927-943. 
RICHARD 

THE  FEARLESS, 

r.  943-99(5. 

I 


RICHARD 

THE  GOOD, 

r.  996-1026. 


Emma, 
m.  1.  JStltelred  II.  of 

England. 

m,  2.  Cnut  of  England 
and  Denmark. 


1 

1 

RICHARD  m 

ROBERT 

r.  1026-1028. 

i                   THE  MAGNIFICENT, 

r.  1028-1035. 

- 

WILLIAM 

THE  CONQUEROR, 

r.  1035-1087. 

1 

ROBERT  II. 

WILLIAM                     HENRY  I. 

I 

Adela, 

r.  1087-1096. 

RUFUS,                       r.  1106-1135. 

m.  Stephen, 

(from  1096  to  1100 

r.  1096-1100. 

Count  of  Bloia. 

the  Duchy  was 

\ 

held  bv  his 

Matilda, 

STEPHEN 

brother  William,) 
and  1100-1  106, 

m.  GEOFFRY, 

COUNT  OF  ANJOU 

OF   BLOIS, 

s.  1135. 

(when  he  was  over- 

AND  MAINE 

thrown  at  Tinche- 

(who  won  the 

brai  by  his 

Duchy  from 

brother  Henry.) 

Stephen). 

HENRY  II. 

Invested  with  the 

Duchy  1151, 

d.  1189. 

1 
RICHARD 

JOHN, 

THE   LION  HEART, 

r.  11  00-  1204. 

r.  1189-1199.             (when  Normandy  was  conquered 
by  France..) 

EDWARD   111.      HENKY   IV. 


xlv 


Claim  of  EDWARD  III.  to  the  French  Crown. 


PHILIP  m. 

THE   BOLD, 
'l 

PHILIP  IV. 

THE   FAIR, 

r.  15285-1314. 

1 

Charles.  Count 
of  Valois, 
d.  1&25. 

PHILIP  VL 

OF  VALOIS, 

r.  1328-1350. 
JOHN  II. 

THE   GOOD. 

r.  1350-1364. 

LEWIS  X.            PHILIP  V.        CHARLES  IV. 
r.  1314-1316.            THE  I.ONO,            THE  FAIR, 
r.  1316-1322.         r.  1322-1328. 

JOHN  I. 
16  Nov.-  19  Nov. 
1316. 

Isabel, 
m.  Edward  II. 
of  England. 

Edward  III. 
of  England. 

Descent  of  HENRY  IV. 


HENRY  III. 
I 


EDWARD  I. 


EDW/ 


Edmund, 
Earl  of  Lancaster. 


LRD  EL 


Thomas, 

Earl  of  Lancaster, 
beheaded  1322. 


Henry,        * 
Earl  of  Lancaster. 


Henry, 
Duke  of  Lancaster. 


I  I 

John  of  Gaunt,      —      Blanche 
Duke  of  Lancaster.  I  of  Lancaster. 

HENKY  IV. 


xlvi 


GENEALOGICAL  TABLES. 


HOUSB  OP 


EDWARD 


Lionel.  Duke 
Of  Clarence. 


Phi/i 


m.  Eilmitnd 
Mortimer, 
Earl  of  March. 


sr  Itfc 


Roger  Mortimer, 
Earl  of  March. 


Edmund 

Mortimer, 

Earl  of  March, 

d.1424. 


Anne  Mortl* 


Richard 
Duke  of 
slain  at 


EDWARD  IV.               Edmund, 
Earl  of  Rutland, 

George, 
Duke  of 

slain  at  Wake- 

Clarence, 

field,  14oO. 

m.  Isabel  Neville. 
\ 

I                        1                        1 
EDWARD     Richard,        Elizabeth,      Kath 
V.          Duke  of        m.  HENRY        m. 
York.                VIL             Will 
Court 

irine,     Edward,           Margraret, 
Sir         Earl  of           Countess  of 
iam     Warwick,           Salisbury, 
enay.    beheaded          beheaded 

1499.                    1541. 

m.  Sir  Richard 

. 

Pole. 
1 

He 

Court 

iry 
enay. 

Henry  Pole, 
Lord 

Marquis'  ' 
Of  Exeter, 

Montacute, 
beheaded 

beheaded 

mm, 

1539. 

Edward 

Courtenay, 

Ear'  of  Devon. 

IMt 

BOUSE  OF  YOliK. 


xivii 


YORK. 


ra. 


Edmund  of 

Langley 
Duke  of  York 


mer   •-     Richard, 

Earl  of  Cam- 
bridge, 
beheaded,  1415. 

Plantagenet, 

York, 

Wakefleld,  14CO. 


RICHARD  III. 
m.  Anne  Neville. 


Elizabeth  —  John  de  la  Pole, 
Duke  of  Suffolk 


Margaret, 

m.  Chai-les.  Duke  of 
Burgundy. 


Edward,  John  de  la  Pole,  Edmund  d*  la  Pole,  Richard  de  la  Pole, 

Prince  of  Earl  of  Lincoln,  Earl  of  Suffolk,  slain  at  the  battle 

Wales.  slain  at  Stoke,  beheaded  1513.  of  Pavia,  1W5. 

d.  1484.  1487. 


Reginald  Pole, 

Archbishop  of 

Canterbury. 

and  Cardinal, 

U.  1553. 


xlviii 


GENEALOGICAL   TABLED, 


DAUGHTERS   OF    HENRY   VII. 


xlix 


o  a- 

5  > 

5  i" 

S  w 

2  w 


lii 


GENEALOGICAL   TABLES. 


SOVEREIGNS 


EDWARD 


1 

1 

Edward, 

Lionel,       1.  Blanche,  =  John  of  Gaunt,  =  3. 

Katharine 

Prince  or 
Wales, 

Duke  of      daughter  of            Duke  of 
Clarence    Henry,  Duke        Lancaster, 

Swynford. 

b.  1330, 

b.  1338,    of  Lancaster.      b.  about  1340. 

d.  1376. 
1 

d.  1368.                                       d.  1399. 

RICH.  II. 

Philippa,       HENRY  IV.                                 Jol 

\ 
in  Beaufort, 

b.  1366,           m.  Edmund     b.  1366,  d.  1413.                            Earl  of  Somerset 

deposed 

Mortimer,        m.  1.  Mary  de 

1399. 

Earl  of               Bohun. 

March. 

Roger             HENRY  V.                               John  Beaufort. 

Mortimer,       b.  1388,  d.  1422. 

Duke  of 

Earl  of         m.  Katharine  of 

Somerset. 

March.            France,  who  =  3.  Owen  Tudor. 

1 

Edmund 

Anne          HENRY  VI.              Edmund  = 

Margaret 

Mortimer, 

Mortimer,        b.  1421,                 Tudor,  Earl 

Beaufort. 

Earl  of 

m.  Richard,       d.  1471.               of  Richmond. 

March, 

Earl  of     m.  Margaret  of 

<L1484. 

Car,'.-              Anjou. 

bridge, 

who  was                                                           *— 

•  \ 

beheaded,        Edward, 

1 

. 

1415.       Prince  of  Wales 

HENRY  Vn. 

b.  1453,                                           b.  1456,  d.  1509. 

slain  at 

Tewkesbury, 

1471. 

1.  Katharine  •• 
of  Aragon. 


RY  VIII.  =  2.  Anne  Boleyn.    —    8.  Jane  Seymour. 


b.  1491,  d.  1547. 


MARY,          ELIZABETH,  EDWARD  VI. 

b.  1516,  d.  1558.    b.  1533,  d.  1603.  b.  1537,  d.  1553. 

m.  Philip  of  Spain. 


THE  SOVEREIGNS   OF   ENGLAND. 


Uii 


OF  ENGI/AND— continued. 


m. 


Edmund  of 

Langley. 
Duke  of  York, 
b.  1341,  d.  1402. 


Richard, 

Earl  of  Cambridge, 

beheaded  1415. 

m.  Anne 

Mortimer. 


Richard  Plantagenet, 
Duke  of  York, 
.              slain  at 
Wakefleld,  1460. 
1 

EDWARD  IV. 
b.  1442,  d.  1483. 
m.  Elizabeth 
Woodville. 

George, 
Clarence,  b. 

Duke  of 
1449,  d.  1478. 

RICHARD  IIL 
b.  1452,  d.  1485. 
m.  Anne  Neville. 

f                         1 
=  Elizabeth,      EDWARD 
d.  1503.                 V. 
b.  1470. 

Richard,    Edward,              Margaret, 
Duke  of      Earl  of              Countess  of 
York,     Warwick,             Salisbury, 
b.  1472.    beheaded              beh.  1541, 
1499.                       m.  Sir 
Richard 
Pole. 

Edward, 
Prince  of 
Wales, 
b.  1473,  d.  1484. 

Margaret, 
b.  1489.  d.  1541. 
m.  1.  James  IV. 
King  of  Scots. 

I 
James  V. 
King  of  Scots, 
d.  1542. 
1 
Mary, 
Queen  of  Scots, 
beheaded,  1587. 

Mary, 
b.  1498,  d.  1583. 
m.  2.  Charles 
Brandon.  Duke  of 
Suffolk. 

Frances  Brandon, 
m.  Henry  Grey, 
Duke  of  Suffolk. 

Jane  Grey, 
beheaded,  1554. 
m.  Lord  Guildford 
Dudley. 

b.  1566.  d.  1625. 
m.  Anne  of  Denmark. 

[/See  next  page.} 


liv 


GENEALOGICAL  TABLES. 


SOVEREIGNS 


JAMES 

I 


Charles  I. 

b.  1600,  beheaded  1649. 
m.  Henrietta  Maria  of  France. 


CHARLES  II. 
b.  1630,  d.  10S5. 

1.  Anne  Hyde,  = 

=  JAMES  II.  = 
b.  16«, 
d.  1701. 

•  2.  Mary  of              Mary 
Modena.     b.  1631,  died  1660. 
m.  William, 
Prince  of  Orange. 

MARY,              ANNE,    James  Francis           WILLIAM  III. 
b.  1662,               b  1665,    Edward  Stuart,          b.  1C50.  d.  1702. 
d.  1694.            ,  d.  1714.         the  Old                    m.  MARY  vf 
m.                                    Pretender,                   ENGLAND. 
WILLIAM                         b.  1688,  d.  1766. 
IIL 

Charles 
Edward 
Stuart,  the 
Youn^ 
Pretender, 
b.  1720, 
d.1788. 

1 
Henry 
Benedict 
Stuart, 
Cardinal 
York, 
b.  1725, 
d.1807. 

THE  SOVEREIGNS  OF  ENGLAND. 


OF  ENGI,AND-contlntted. 


Elizabeth, 

b.  159«,  d.  1669. 

m.   Frederick, 

Elector  Palatine. 

Sophia, 

d.  1714. 

m.  Ernest    Angnstut, 
Electcr  of  Hanover. 

GEORGE  I. 

b  16ttC,  d.  17v>7. 

m.  Sophia  Dorothea 

Of  Zell. 


GEORGE  TL 
b.  1(583,  d.  1700. 
m  Caroline  of 

Brandenburg- 
Anapa  ch. 

Frederick, 

Prince  of  \  ales. 

b.  1707,  u.  1751. 

GE  )RGE  III. 

b.  17    ,  d    1820. 

m.  Charlotte  of 

Mecklenburg- 

Stretitz. 

I 


GEORGE  IV.  WILLIAM  IV.  Edward,  Ernest  Augustus, 

b.  17(W,  d.  1830.  b.  1765,  d.  1837.  Duke  of  Kent,         King  of  Hanover! 

m.  Caroline  of  b.  1767,  d.  1880.  b.  1771,  d.  1851. 

ftmntwick- 
WotfenbiitteL 


m.  Prince  Albert  of 
Saxe-Cobwg  and 


A  SHORT  HISTORY 

OF 

THE  ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

CHAPTER  I. 

THE  ENGLISH  KINGDOMS,  607-1013. 
Section  I.— Britain  and  the  English. 

{Authorities. — For  the  constitution  and  settlement  of  the  English  see  Kemble's 
"  Saxons  in  England  "  and  especially  the  "  Constitutional  History  of  England  " 
by  Dr.  Stubbs.  Sir  Francis  Palgrave's  History  of  the  English  Commonweal. a  Is 
valuable,  but  to  be  used  with  care.  A  vigorous  and  accurate  sketch  of  the  early 
constitution  may  be  found  in  Mr.  Freeman's  History  of  the  Norman  Conquest 
vol.  i.  See  also  "  The  Making  of  England  "  and  "  The  Conquest  of  England  "  kv 
J.  R.  Green.] 

FOR  the  fatherland  of  the  English  race  we  must  look  far 
away  from  England  itself.  In  the  fifth  century  after  the 
birth  of  Christ,  the  one  country  which  we  know 
to  have  borne  the  name  of  Angeln  or  theEngleland  Engird, 
lay  in  the  district  which  we  now  call  Sleswick,  a 
district  in  the  heart  of  the  peninsula  which  parts  the  Baltic 
from  the  northern  seas.  Its  pleasant  pastures,  its  black- 
timbered  homesteads,  its  prim  little  townships  looking  down 
on  inlets  of  purple  water,  were  then  but  a  wild  waste  of 
heather  and  sand,  girt  along  the  coast  with  sunless  wood- 
land, broken  here  and  there  by  meadows  which  crept  down 
to  the  marshes  and  the  sea.  The  dwellers  in  this  district, 
however,  seem  to  have  been  merely  an  outlying  fragment  of 
what  was  called  the  Engle  or  English  folk,  the  bulk  of  whom 
lay  probably  along  the  middle  Elbe  and  on  the  Weser.  To 
the  north  of  the  English  in  their  Sleswick  home  lay  another 

1 


2  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

kindred  tribe,  the  Jutes,  whose  name  is  still  preserved  in 
their  district  of  Jutland.  To  the  south  of  them  a  number 
of  German  tribes  had  drawn  together  in  their  homeland  be- 
tween the  Elbe  and  the  Ems,  and  in  a  wide  tract  across  the 
Ems  to  the  Rhine,  into  the  people  of  the  Saxons.  Engle, 
Saxon,  and  Jute  all  belonged  to  the  same  Low  German 
branch  of  the  Teutonic  family  ;  and  at  the  moment  when 
history  discovers  them,  they  were  being  drawn  together  by 
the  ties  of  a  common  blood,  common  speech,  common  social 
and  political  institutions.  Each  of  them  was  destined  to 
share  in  the  conquest  of  the  land  in  which  we  live  ;  and  it  is 
from  the  union  of  all  of  them  when  its  conquest  was  com- 
plete that  the  English  people  has  sprung. 

Of  the  temper  and  life  of  the  folk  in  this  older  England 
we  know  little.  But,  from  the  glimpses  which  we  catch 
1^  of  them  when  conquest  had  brought  them  to  the 
Eng'ish  shores  of  Britain,  their  political  and  social  or 
People,  ganizatiori  must  have  been  that  of  the  German 
race  to  which  they  belonged.  The  basis  of  their  society  was 
the  free  man.  He  alone  was  known  as  "  the  man/'  or  "  the 
churl  ;"  and  two  phrases  set  his  freedom  vividly  before  us. 
He  was  "  the  free-necked  man,"  whose  long  hair  floated  over 
a  neck  that  had  never  bent  to  a  lord.  He  was  "  the  weaponed 
man,"  who  alone  bore  spear  and  sword,  for  he  alone  possessed 
the  right  which  in  such  a  state  of  society  formed  the  main 
check  upon  lawless  outrage,  the  right  of  private  war.  Among 
the  English,  as  among  all  the  races  of  mankind,  justice  had 
originally  sprung  from  each  man's  personal  action.  There 
had  been  a  time  when  every  freeman  was  his  own  avenger. 
But  even  in  the  earliest  forms  of  English  society  of  which 
we  catch  traces  this  right  of  self-defense  was  being  modified 
and  restricted  by  a  growing  sense  of  public  justice.  The 
"  blood-wite,"  or  compensation  in  money  for  personal  wrong, 
was  the  first  effort  of  the  tribe  as  a  whole  to  regulate  private 
revenge.  The  freeman's  life  and  the  freeman's  limb  had 
each  on  this  system  its  legal  price.  "  Eye  for  eye,"  ran  the 
rough  customary  code,  and  "limb  for  limb,"  or  for  each 
fair  damages.  We  see  a  further  step  towards  the  recognition 
of  a  wrong  as  clone  not  to  the  individual  man,  but  to  the 
people  at  large,  in  another  custom  of  early  date..  .  The.  price 
of  life  or  limb  was  paid,  not  by  the  wrong-doer  to  the  man 


BRITAIN   AND   THE  ENGLISH.  3 

he  wronged,  but  by  the  family  or  house  of  the  wrong-doer  to 
the  family  or  house  of  the  wronged.  Order  and  law  were 
thus  made  to  rest  in  each  little  group  of  English  people 
upon  the  blood-bond  which  knit  its  families  together  ;  every 
outrage  was  held  to  have  been  done  by  all  who  were  linked 
by  blood  to  the  doer  of  it,  every  crime  to  have  been  done 
against  all  who  were  linked  by  blood  to  the  sufferer  from  it. 
From  this  sense  of  the  value  of  the  family  bond,  as  a  means 
of  restraining  the  wrong-doer  by  forces  which  the  tribe  as 
a  whole  did  not  as  yet  possess,  sprang  the  first  rude  forms 
of  English  justice.  Each  kinsman  was  his  kinsman's  keeper, 
bound  to  protect  him  from  wrong,  to  hinder  him  from 
wrong-doing,  and  to  suffer  with  and  pay  for  him,  if  wrong 
wore  done.  So  fully  was  this  principle  recognized  that, 
even  if  any  man  was  charged  before  his  fellow-tribesmen 
with  crime,  his  kinsfolk  still  remained  in  fact  his  sole 
judges  ;  for  it  was  by  their  solemn  oath  of  his  innocence 
or  his  guilt  that  he  had  to  stand  or  fall. 

The  blood-bond  gave  both  its  military  and  social  form  to 
Old  English  society.  Kinsmen  fought  side  by  side  in  the 
hour  of  battle,  and  the  feelings  of  honor  and  ^he 
discipline  which  held  the  host  together  were  English 
drawn  from  the  common  duty  of  every  man  in  Society, 
each  little  group  of  warriors  to  his  house.  And  as  they  fought 
side  by  side  on  the  field,  so  they  dwelled  side  by  side  on  the 
soil.  Harling  abode  by  Harling,  and  Billing  by  Billing  ;  and 
each  "  wick  "  or  "  ham"  or  "  stead  "  or  "  tun  "  took  its  name 
from  the  kinsmen  who  dwelt  together  in  it.  The  home  or 
"  ham  "  of  the  Billings  would  be  Billingham,  and  the  "  tun" 
or  township  of  the  Harlings  would  be  Harlington.  But  in 
such  settlements,  the  tie  of  blood  was  widened  into  the  lar- 
ger tie  of  land.  Land  with  the  German  race  seems  at  a  very 
early  time  to  have  become  the  accompaniment  of  full  free- 
dom. The  freeman  was  strictly  the  freeholder,  and  the  ex- 
ercise of  his  full  rights  as  a  free  member  of* the  community 
to  which  he  belonged  was  inseparable  from  the  possession  of 
his  "holding."  The  landless  man  ceased  for  all  practical 
purposes  to  be  free,  though  he  was  no  man's  slave.  In  the 
very  earliest  glimpse  we  get  of  the  German  race  we  see  them 
a  race  of  land-holders  and  land-tillers.  Tacitus,  the  first 
Eoman  who  sought  to  know  these  destined  conquerors  of 


4  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Rome,  describes  them  as  pasturing  on  the  forest  glades 
around  their  villages,  and  plowing  their  village  fields. 
A  feature  which  at  once  struck  him  as  parting  them  from 
the  civilized  world  to  which  he  himself  belonged,  was  their 
hatred  of  cities,  and  their  love  even  within  their  little  settle- 
ments of  a  jealous  independence.  "  They  live  apart,"  he 
says,  "each  by  himself,  as  woodside,  plain,  or  fresh  spring 
attracts  him."  And  as  each  dweller  within  the  settlement 
was  jealous  of  his  own  isolation  and  independence  among  his 
fellow  settlers,  so  each  settlement  was  jealous  of  its  inde- 
pendence among  its  fellow  settlements.  Of  the  character 
of  their  life  in  this  early  world,  however,  we  know  little  save 
what  may  be  gathered  from  the  indications  of  a  later  time. 
Each  little  farmer  commonwealth  was  girt  in  by  its  own 
border  or  "mark, "a  belt  of  forest  or  waste  or  fen  which 
parted  it  from  its  fellow  villages,  a  ring  of  common  ground 
which  none  of  its  settlers  might  take  for  his  own,  but  which 
sometimes  served  as  a  death-ground  where  criminals  met 
their  doom,  and  was  held  to  be  the  special  dwelling-place  of 
the  nixie  and  the  will-o'-the-wisp.  If  a  stranger  came 
through  this  wood,  or  over  this  waste,  custom  bade  him 
blow  his  horn  as  he  came,  for  if  he  stole  through  secretly  he 
was  taken  for  a  foe,  and  any  man  might  lawfully  slay  him. 
Inside  this  boundary  the  "  township,"  as  the  village  was 
then  called  from  the  "tun  "  or  rough  fence  and  trench  that 
served  as  its  simple  fortification,  formed  a  ready-made  for- 
tress in  war,  while  in  peace  its  entrenchments  were  service- 
able in  the  feuds  of  village  with  village,  or  house  with  house. 
Within  the  village  we  find  from  the  first  a  marked  social 
difference  between  two  orders  of  its  indwellers.  The  bulk 
of  its  homesteads  were  those  of  its  freemen  or  "  ceorls  ; " 
but  amongst  these  were  the  larger  home  of  "  eorls,"  or  men 
distinguished  among  their  fellows  by  noble  blood,  who  were 
held  in  an  hereditary  reverence,  and  from  whom  the  leaders 
of  the  village  were  chosen  in  war  time,  or  rulers  in  time  of 
peace.  But  the  choice  was  a  purely  voluntary  one,  and  the 
man  of  noble  blood  enjoyed  no  legal  privilege  among  his  fel- 
lows. The  holdings  of  the  freemen  clustered  round  a  moot- 
hill  or  sacred  tree  where  the  community  met  from  time  to  time 
to  order  its  own  industry  and  to  frame  its  own  laws.  Here 
plow-land  and  meadow-land  were  shared  in  due  lot  among 


BRITAIN'    AND   THE    ENGLISH.  .*) 

fhp  villagers,  and  field  and  homestead  passed  from  man  to 
man.  Here  strife  of  farmer  with  farmer  was  settled  accord- 
ing to  the  "customs"  of  the  township  as  its  "elder  men" 
stated  them,  and  the  wrong-doer  was  judged  and  his  finea-- 
sessed  by  the  kinsfolk  ;  and  here  men  were  chosen  to  follow 
headman  or  eaklorman  to  hundred  court  or  war.  It  is  with 
a  reverence  such  as  is  stirred  by  the  sight  of  the  head-waters 
of  some  mighty  river  that  one  looks  back  to  these  tiny  moots, 
where  the  men  of  the  village  met  to  order  the  village  life  and 
the  village  industry,  as  their  descendants,  the  men  of  a  later 
England,  meet  in  parliament  at  AVestminster,  to  frame  laws 
and  do  justice  for  the  great  empire  which  has  sprung  from 
this  little  body  of  farmer-commonwealths  in  Sleswick. 

The  religion  of  the  English  was  the  same  as  that  of  the 
whole  German  family.  Christianity,  which  had  by  this  time 
brought  about  the  conversion  of  the  Roman  Em-  ^e 
pire,  had  not  penetrated  as  yet  among  the  forests  English 
of  the  Xorth.  Our  own  names  for  the  days  of  Baligion. 
the  week  still  recall  to  us  the  gods  whom  our  fathers  wor- 
shiped. Wednesday  is  the  day  of  Woden,  the  war-god,  the 
guardian  of  ways  and  boundaries,  the  inventor  of  letters,  the 
common  god  of  the  whole  conquering  people,  whom  every 
tribe  held  to  be  the  first  ancestor  of  its  kings.  Thursday  is 
the  day  of  thunder,  or,  as  the  Xorthmen  called  him,  Thor, 
the  god  of  air  and  storm  and  rain  ;  as  Friday  is  Frea's-day, 
the  god  of  peace  and  joy  and  fruitfulness,  whose  emblems, 
borne  aloft  by  dancing  maidens,  brought  increase  to  every 
field  and  stall  they  visited.  Saturday  may  commemorate  an 
obscure  god  Saetere  ;  Tuesday  the  dark  god  Tiw,  to  meet 
whom  was  death.  Behind  these  floated  dim  shapes  of  an 
older  mythology  ;  Eostre,  the  goddess  of  the  dawn,  or  of  the 
spring,  who  lends  her  name  to  the  Christian  festival  of  the 
Resurrection  ;  "  Wyrcl,"  the  death-goddess,  whose  memory 
lingered  long  in  the  "  weird"  of  northern  superstition  :  or 
the  Shield-Maidens,  the  "mighty  women  "  who,  an  old  rime 
tells  us,  "  wrought  in  the  battle-field  their  toil,  and  hurled 
the  thrilling  javelins."  Nearer  to  the  popular  fancy  lay 
deities  of  wood  and  fell,  or  the  hero-gods  of  legend  and 
song;  "Xicor,"  the  water-sprite,  who  gave  us  our  water- 
nixies  and  "Old  Nick";  "  AVeland,"  the  forger  of  mighty 
shields  and  sharp-biting  swords,  whose  memory  lingers  in 


6  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

the  stories  of  "  Weyland's  Smithy"  in  Berkshire  ;  while  the 
hame  of  Ailesbury  may  preserve  the  last  trace  of  the  legend 
of  Weland's  brother,  the  sun-archer  JEgil.  But  it  is  only  in 
broken  fragments  that  this  mass  of  early  faith  and  early 
poetry  still  lived  for  us,  in  a  name,  in  the  gray  stones  of  a 
cairn,  or  in  snatches  of  our  older  song  :  and  the  faint  traces 
of  worship  or  of  priesthood  which  we  find  in  later  history 
show  how  lightly  it  clung  to  the  national  life. 

From  Sleswick  and  the  shores  of  the  Northern  Sea  we 
must  pass,  before  opening  our  story,  to  a  land  which,  dear 

as  it  is  now  to  Englishmen,  had  not  as  yet  been 
Britain,     trodden  by  English  feet.     The  island  of  Britain 

had  for  nearly  four  hundred  years  been  a  prov- 
ince of  the  Empire.  A  descent  of  Julius  Caesar  revealed 
it  (B.C.  55)  to  the  Roman  world,  but  nearly  a  century 
elapsed  before  the  Emperor  Claudius  attempted  its  definite 
conquest.  The  victories  of  Julius  Agricola  (A.D.  78-84) 
carried  the  Eoman  frontier  to  the  Firths  of  Forth  and  of 
Clyde,  and  the  work  of  Eoman  civilization  followed  hard 
upon  the  Eoman  sword.  Population  was  grouped  in  cities 
such  as  York  or  Lincoln,  cities  governed  by  their  own  muni- 
cipal officers,  guarded  by  massive  walls,  and  linked  together 
by  a  network  of  roads,  which  extended  from  one  end  of  the 
island  to  the  other.  Commerce  sprang  up  in  ports  lite  that 
of  London  ;  agriculture  flourished  till  Britain  was  able  at 
need  to  supply  the  necessities  of  Gaul  ;  its  mineral  resources 
were  explored  in  the  tin  mines  of  Cornwall,  the  lead  mines 
of  Somerset  and  Northumberland,  and  the  iron  mines  of  the 
Forest  of  Dean.  The  wealth  of  the  island  grew  fast  during 
centuries  of  unbroken  peace,  but  the  evils  which  were  slowly 
sapping  the  strength  of  the  Eoman  Empire  at  large  must 
have  told  heavily  on  the  real  wealth  of  the  province  of  Brit- 
ain. Here,  as  in  Italy  or  Gaul,  the  population  probably 
declined  as  the  estates  of  the  landed  proprietors  grew  larger, 
and  the  cultivators  sank  into  serfs  whose  cabins  clustered 
round  the  luxurious  villas  of  their  lords.  The  mines,  if 
worked  by  forced  labor,  must  have  been  a  source  of  endless 
oppression.  Town  and  country  were  alike  crushed  by  heavy 
taxation,  while  industry  was  fettered  by  laws  that  turned 
every  trade  into  an  hereditary  caste.  Above  all,  the  purely 
despotic  system  of  the  Eoman  Government,  by  crushing  all 


BRITAIN   AND   THE   ENGLISH.  7 

local  independence,  crushed  all  local  vigor.  Men  forgot 
how  to  fight  for  their  country  when  they  forgot  how  to 
govern  it. 

Such  causes  of  decay  were  common  to  every  province  of 
the  Empire  ;  but  there  were  others  that  sprang  from  the 
peculiar  circumstances  of  Britain  itself.  The  island  was 
weakened  by  a  disunion  within,  which  arose  from  the  partial 
character  of  its  civilization.  It  was  only  in  the  towns  that 
the  conquered  Britons  became  entirely  Komanized.  Over 
large  tracts  of  country  the  rural  Britons  seemed  to  have 
remained  apart,  speaking  their  own  tongue,  owning  some 
traditional  allegiance  to  their  native  chiefs,  and  even  retain- 
ing their  native  laws.  The  use  of  the  Roman  language  may 
be  taken  as  marking  the  progress  of  Roman  civilization,  and 
though  Latin  had  wholly  superseded  the  language  of  the 
conquered  peoples  in  Spain  or  Gaul,  its  use  seems  to  have 
been  confined  in  Britain  to  the  townsfolk  and  the  wealthier 
landowners  without  the  towns.  The  dangers  that  sprang 
from  such  a  severance  between  the  two  elements  of  the 
population  must  have  been  stirred  into  active  life  by  the 
danger  which  threatened  Britain  from  the  North.  The 
Picts  who  had  been  sheltered  from  Roman  conquest  by  the 
fastnesses  of  the  Highlands  were  roused  in  their  turn  to 
attack  by  the  weakness  of  the  province  and  the  hope  of 
plunder.  Their  invasions  penetrated  to  the  heart  of  the 
island.  Raids  so  extensive  could  hardly  have  been  effected 
without  help  from  within,  and  the  dim  history  of  the  time 
allows  us  to  see  not  merely  an  increase  of  disunion  between 
the  Romanized  and  un-Romanized  population  of  Britain, 
but  even  an  alliance  between  the  last  and  their  free  kins- 
folk, the  Picts.  The  struggles  of  Britain,  however,  lingered 
on  till  dangers  nearer  home  forced  the  Empire  to  recall  its 
legions  and  leave  the  province  to  itself.  Ever  since  the 
birth  of  Christ  the  countries  which  lay  round  the  Mediter- 
ranean Sea,  and  which  then  comprehended  the  whole  of  the 
civilized  world,  had  rested  in  peace  beneath  the  rule  of 
Rome.  During  four  hundred  years  its  frontier  had  held  at 
bay  the  barbarian  world  without — the  Parthian  of  the  Eu- 
phrates, the  Numidian  of  the  African  desert,  the  German  of 
the  Danube  or  the  Rhine.  It  was  this  mass  of  savage  barbar- 
ism that  at  last  broke  in  on  the  Empire  as  it  sank  into  decay. 


8  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

In  the  western  dominions  of  Some  the  triumph  of  the  in- 
vaders was  complete.  The  Franks  conquered  and  colonized 
Gaul.  The  AVest-Goths  conquered  and  colonized  Spain. 
The  Vandals  founded  a  kingdom  in  Africa.  The  Burgun- 
dians  encamped  in  the  border-land  between  Italy  and  the 
Rhone.  The  East- Goths  ruled  at  last  in  Italy  itself.  And 
now  that  the  fated  hour  was  come,  the  Saxon  and  the  Engle 
too  closed  upon  their  prey. 

It  was  to  defend  Italy  against  the  Goths  that  Rome  in 
410  recalled  her  legions  from  Britain.  The  province,  thus 
left  unaided,  seems  to  have  fought  bravely  against 
thEin  Uh  ^s  assailants,  and  once  at  least  to  have  driven 
'  back  the  Picts  to  their  mountains  in  a  rising  of 
despair.  But  the  threat  of  fresh  inroads  found  Britain 
torn  with  civil  quarrels  which  made  a  united  resistance  im- 
possible, while  its  Pictish  enemies  strengthened  themselves 
by  a  league  with  marauders  from  Ireland  (Scots  as  they 
were  then  called),  whose  pirate-boats  were  harrying  the 
western  coast  of  the  island,  and  with  a  yet  more  formidable 
race  of  pirates  who  had  long  been  pillaging  along  the  Brit- 
ish Channel.  These  were  the  English.  We  do  not  know 
whether  it  was  the  pressure  of  other  tribes  or  the  example 
of  their  German  brethren  who  were  now  moving  in  a  general 
attack  on  the  Empire  from  their  forest  homes,  or  simply 
the  barrenness  of  their  coast,  which  drove  the  hunters, 
farmers,  fishermen,  of  the  English  tribes  to  sea.  But  the 
daring  spirit, of  their  race  already  broke  out  in  the  secresy 
and  suddenness  of  their  swoop,  in  the  fierceness  of  their 
onset,  in  the  careless  glee  with  which  they  seized  either 
sword  or  oar.  "  Foes  are  they,"  sang  a  Roman  poet  of  the 
time,  "fierce  beyond  other  foes,  and  cunning  as  they  are 
fierce  ;  the  sea  is  their  school  of  war,  and  the  storm  their 
friend ;  they  are  sea-wolves  that  live  on  the  pillage  of  the 
world."  To  meet  the  league  of  Pict,  Scot,  and  Saxon  by  the 
forces  of  the  province  itself  became  impossible ;  and  the 
one  course  left  was  to  imitate  the  fatal  policy  by  which  the 
Empire  had  invited  its  own  doom  while  striving  to  avert  it, 
the  policy  of  matching  barbarian  against  barbarian.  The 
rulers  of  Britain  resolved  to  break  the  league  by  detaching 
from  it  the  freebooters  who  were  harrying  her  eastern  coast 
and  to  use  their  new  allies  against  the  Pict.  By  the  usual 


THE   ENGLISH  CONQUEST.      449  TO   577.  9 

pomises  of  land  and  pay,  a  band  of  warriors  from  Jutland 
were  drawn  for  this  purpose  in  449  to  the  shores  of  Britain, 
with  their  chiefs,  Hengest  and  Horsa,  at  their  head. 


Section  II.— The  English  Conquest.    449—577. 

[Authorities  for  the  Conquest  of  Britain. — The  only  extant  British  account  Is 
that  of  the  monk  Gildas,  diffuse  and  inflated,  but  valuable  as  the  one  authority 
for  the  state  of  the  island  at  the  time,  and  as  giving,  in  the  conclusion  of  his 
work,  the  native  story  of  the  conquest  of  Kent.  I  have  examined  his  general 
character,  and  the  objections  to  his  authenticity,  etc.,  in  two  papers  in  the 
Saturday  Review  for  April  24  and  May  8,  1869.  The  conquest  of  Kent  is  the  only 
one  of  which  we  have  any  record  from  the  side  of  the  conquered.  The  English 
conquerors  have  left  brief  jottings  of  the  conquest  of  Kent,  Sussex,  and  Wessex, 
in  the  curious  annals  which  form  the  opening  of  the  compilation  now  known  as 
the  "English  Chronicle."  They  are  undoubtedly  historic,  though  with  a  slight 
mythical  intermixture.  We  possess  no  materials  for  the  history  of  the  English  in 
their  invasion  of  Mid-Britain  or  Mercia,  and  a  fragment  of  the  annals  of  North- 
umbria  embodied  in  the  later  compilation  which  bears  the  name  of  Nennius  alone 
throws  light  upon  their  actions  in  the  North.  Dr.  Guest's  papers  in  the  "  Origines 
Celtic*  "  are  the  best  modern  narratives  of  the  conquest.  The  story  has  since 
been  told  by  Mr.  Green  in  "  The  Making  of  England.] 

IT  is  with  the  landing  of  Hengest  and  his  war-band  at 
Ebbsfleet  on  the  shores  of  the  Isle  of  Thanet  that  English  his- 
tory begins.  Xo  spot  in  Britain  can  be  so  sacred 
to  Englishmen  as  that  which  first  felt  the  tread 
of  English  feet.  There  is  little  indeed  to  catch 
the  eye  in  Ebbsfleet  itself,  a  mere  lift  of  higher  ground, 
with  a  few  gray  cottages  dotted  over  it,  cut  off  nowadays 
from  the  sea  by  a  reclaimed  meadow  and  a  sea-wall.  But 
taken  as  a  whole,  the  scene  has  a  wild  beauty  of  its  own. 
To  the  right  the  white  curve  of  Ramsgate  cliffs  looks  down 
on  the  crescent  of  Pegwell  Bay  ;  far  away  to  the  left,  across 
gray  marsh-levels,  where  smoke- wreaths  mark  the  sites  of 
Richborough  and  Sandwich,  the  coast-line  bends  dimly  to 
the  fresh  rise  of  cliffs,  beyond  Deal.  Everything  in  the 
character  of  the  ground  confirms  the  national  tradition 
which  fixed  here  the  first  landing-place  of  our  English 
fathers,  for  great  as  the  physical  changes  of  the  country 
have  been  since  the  fifth  century,  they  have  told  little  on 
its  main  features.  It  is  easy  to  discover  in  the  misty  level 
of  the  present  Minster  marsh  what  was  once  a  broad  inlet  of 
sea  parting  Thanet  from  the  mainland  of  Britain,  through 
which  the  pirate-boats  of  the  first  Englishmen  came  sailing 
with  a  fair  wind  to  the  little  gravel-spit  of  Ebbsfleet ;  and 


10  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Eichborough,  a  fortress  whose  broken  ramparts  still  rise 
above  the  gray  flats  which  have  taken  the  place  of  this  older 
sea-channel,  was  the  common  landing-place  of  travelers 
from  Gaul.  If  the  war-ships  of  the  pirates  therefore  were 
cruising  off  the  coast 'at  the  moment  when  the  bargain  with 
the  Britons  was  concluded,  their  disembarkation  at  Ebbs- 
fleet  almost  beneath  the  walls  of  Eichborough  would  be 
natural  enough.  But  the  after-current  of  events  serves  to 
show  that  the  choice  of  this  landing-place  was  the  result 
of  a  settled  design.  Between  the  Briton  and  his  hireling 
soldiers  there  could  be  little  trust.  Quarters  in  Thanet 
would  satisfy  the  followers  of  Hengest,  who  still  lay  in  sight 
of  their  fellow-pirates  in  the  Channel,  and  who  felt  them- 
selves secured  against  the  treachery  which  had  so  often 
proved  fatal  to  the  barbarian  by  the  broad  inlet  which  parted 
their  camp  from  the  mainland.  Nor  was  the  choice  less 
satisfactory  to  the  provincial,  trembling — and,  as  the  event 
proved,  justly  trembling — lest  in  his  zeal  against  the  Pict 
he  had  introduced  an  even  fiercer  foe  into  Britain.  His 
dangerous  allies  were  cooped  up  in  a  corner  of  the  land,  and 
parted  from  it  by  a  sea-channel  which  was  guarded  by  the 
strongest  fortresses  ^f  the  coast. 

The  need  of  such  precautions  was  seen  in  the  disputes 
which  arose  as  soon  *is  the  work  for  which  the  mercenaries 
had  been  hired  was  done.  The  Picts  were  hardly 
scattered  to  the  winds  in  a  great  battle  when 
danger  came  from  the  Jutes  themselves.  Their 
numbers  probably  grew  fast  as  the  news  of  the  settlement 
spread  among  the  pirates  in  the  Channel,  and  with  the  in- 
crease of  their  number  must  have  grown  the  difficulty  of 
supplying  rations  and  pay.  The  dispute  which  rose  over 
these  questions  was  at  last  closed  by  Hengest's  men  with  a 
threat  of  war.  The  threat,  however,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
no  easy  one  to  carry  out.  Eight  across  their  path  in  any 
attack  upon  Britain  stretched  the  inlet  of  sea  that  parted 
Thanet  from  the  mainland,  a  strait  which  was  then  travers- 
able  only  at  low  water  by  a  long  and  dangerous  ford,  and 
guarded  at  either  mouth  by  the  fortresses  of  Eichborough 
and  Eeculver.  The  channel  of  the  Medway,  with  the  forest 
of  the  Weald  bending  round  it  from  the  south,  furnished 
another  line  of  defense  in  the  rear,  while  strongholds  on  the 


THE   ENGLISH   CONQUEST.      449  TO  577.  11 

sites  of  our  Canterbury  and  Rochester  guarded  the  road  to 
London  ;  and  all  around  lay  the  soldiers  placed  at  the  com- 
mand of  the  Count  of  the  Saxon  Shore,  to  hold  the  coast 
against  the  barbarian.  Great  however  as  these  difficulties 
were,  they  failed  to  check  the  sudden  onset  of  the  Jutes. 
The  inlet  seems  to  have  been  crossed,  the  coast-road  to 
London  seized,  before  any  force  could  be  collected  to  oppose 
the  English  advance  ;  and  it  was  only  when  they  passed  the 
Swale  and  looked  to  their  right  over  the  potteries  whose 
refuse  still  strews  the  mudbanks  of  Upchurch,  that  their 
march  seems  to  have  swerved 'abruptly  to  the  south.  The 
guarded  walls  of  Rochester  probably  forced  them  to  turn 
southwards  along  the  ridge  of  low  hills  which  forms  the 
eastern  boundary  of  the  Medway  valley.  Their  way  led 
them  through  a  district  full  of  memories  of  a  past  which 
had  even  then  faded  from  the  minds  of  men ;  for  the  hill- 
slopes  which  they  traversed  were  the  grave-ground  of  a 
vanished  race,  and  scattered  among  the  boulders  that  strewed 
the  ground  rose  the  cromlechs  and  huge  barrows  of  the  dead. 
One  mighty  relic  survives  in  the  monument  now  called  Kit's 
Coty  House,  which  had  been  linked  in  old  days  by  an  avenue 
of  huge  stones  to  a  burial-ground  near  Addingtou.  It  was 
from  a  steep  knoll  on  which  the  gray  weather-beaten  stones 
of  this  monument  are  reared  that  the  view  of  their  first 
battle-field  would  break  on  the  English  warriors  ;  and  a 
lane  which  still  leads  down  from  it  through  peaceful  home- 
steads would  guide  them  across  the  ford  which  has  left  its 
name  in  the  little  village  of  Aylesford.  The  Chronicle  of 
the  conquering  people  tells  nothing  of  the  rush  that  may 
have  carried  the  ford,  or  of  the  fight  that  went  struggling 
up  through  the  village.  It  only  tells  that  Horsa  fell  in  the 
moment  of  victory;  and  the  flint-heap. of  Horsted,  which 
has  long  preserved  his  name,  and  was  held  in  after-time  to 
mark  his  grave,  is  thus  the  earliest  of  those  monuments  of 
English  valor  of  which  Westminster  is  the  last  and  noblest 
shrine. 

The  victory  of  Aylesford  did  more  than  give  East  Kent  to 
the  English  ;  it  struck  the  key-note  of  the  whole  English 
conquest   of  Britain.     The   massacre  which  fol-  Extensa, 
lowed  the  battle  indicated  at  once  the  merciless   tionofthe 
nature  of  the  struggle  which  had  begun.     While     Britons. 


12  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

the  wealthier  Kentish  landowners  fled  in  panic  over  sea,  the 
poorer  Britons  took  refuge  in  hill  and  forest  till  hunger 
drove  them  from  their  lurking-places  to  be  cut  down  or  en- 
slaved by  their  conquerors.  It  was  in  vain  that  some  sought 
shelter  within  the  walls  of  their  churches  ;  for  the  rage  of 
the  English  seems  to  have  burned  fiercest  against  the  clergy. 
The  priests  were  slain  at  the  altar,  the  churches  fired,  the 
peasants  driven  by  the  flames  to  fling  themselves  on  a  ring 
of  pitiless  steel.  It  is  a  picture  such  as  this  which  distin- 
guishes the  conquest  of  Britain  from  that  of  the  other  prov- 
inces of  Eome.  The  conquest  of  Gaul  by  the  Frank,  or  of 
Italy  by  the  Lombard,  proved  little  more  than  a  forcible 
settlement  of  the  one  or  the  other  among  tributary  subjects 
who  were  destined  in  a  long  course  of  ages  to  absorb  their 
conquerors.  French  is  the  tongue,  not  of  the  Frank,  but 
of  the  Gaul  whom  he  overcame  ;  and  the  fair  hair  of  the 
Lombard  is  now  all  but  unknown  in  Lombardy.  But  the 
English  conquest  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  was  a  sheer 
dispossession  and  driving  back  of  the  people  whom  the 
English  conquered.  In  the  world-wide  struggle  between 
Eome  and  the  German  invaders  no  land  was  so  stubbornly 
fought  for  or  so  hardly  won.  The  conquest  of  Britain  was 
indeed  only  partly  wrought  out  after  two  centiiries  of  bitter 
warfare.  But  it  was  just  through  the  long  and  merciless 
nature  of  the  struggle  that  of  all  the  German  conquests  this 
proved  the  most  thorough  and  complete.  So  far  as  the 
English  sword  in  these  earlier  days  reached,  Britain  became 
England,  a  land,  that  is,  not  of  Britons,  but  of  Englishmen. 
It  is  possible  that  a  few  of  the  vanquished  people  may  have 
lingered  as  slaves  round  the  homesteads  of  their  English 
conquerors,  and  a  few  of  their  household  words  (if  these 
were  not  brought  in  at  a  later  time)  mingled  oddly  with  the 
English  tongue.  But  doubtful  exceptions  such  as  these 
leave  the  main  facts  untouched.  When  the  s^ady  progress 
of  English  conquest  was  stayed  for  a  while  by  civil  wars  a 
century  and  a  half  after  Aylesford,  the  Briton  had  disap- 
peared from  half  of  the  land  which  had  been  his  own,  and 
the  tongue,  the  religion,  the  laws  of  his  English  conqueror 
reigned  without  a  rival  from  Essex  to  the  Peak  of  Derby- 
shire and-  the  mouth  of  the  Severn,  and  from  the  British 
..Channel  to  the  Firth  of  Forth. 


THE   ENGLISH   CONQUEST.      449   TO   577.  13 

Aylesford,  however,  was  but  the  first  step  in  this  career 
of  conquest.  How  stubborn  the  contest  was  may  be  seen 
from  the  fact  that  it  took  sixty  years  to  complete  conquest 
the  conquest  of  Southern  Britain  alone.  It  was  of  the  Saxon 
twenty  years  before  Kent  itself  was  won.  After  Shore. 
a  second  defeat  at  the  passage  of  the  Cray,  the  Britons 
"  forsook  Kent-land  and  fled  with  much  fear  to  London  ; " 
but  the  ground  was  soon  won  back  again,  and  it  was  not 
until  465  that  a  series  of  petty  conflicts  made  way  for  a 
decisive  struggle  at  AVippedsfleet.  Here  however  the  over- 
throw was  so  terrible  that  all  hope  of  saving  the  bulk  of 
Kent  seems  to  have  been  abandoned,  and  it  was  only  on 
its  southern  shore  that  the  Britons  held  their  ground. 
Eight  years  later  the  long  contest  was  over,  and  with  the 
fall  of  Lynme,  whose  broken  walls  look  from  the  slope  to 
which  they  cling  over  the  great  flat  of  Romney  Marsh,  the 
work  of  the  first  conqueror  was  done.  But  the  greed  of 
plunder  drew  fresh  war-bands  from  the  German  coast.  New 
invaders,  drawn  from  among  the  Saxon  tribes  that  lay  between 
the  Elbe  and  the  Rhine,  were  seen  in  477,  only  four  years 
later,  pushing  slowly  along  the  strip  of  land  which  lay  west- 
ward of  Kent  between  the  Weald  and  the  sea.  Nowhere 
has  the  physical  aspect  of  the  country  been  more  utterly 
changed.  The  vast  sheet  of  scrub,  woodland,  and  waste 
which  then  bore  the  name  of  the  Audredsweald  stretched 
for  more  than  a  hundred  miles  from  the  borders  of  Kent  to 
the  Hampshire  Downs,  extending  northward  almost  to  the 
Thames,  and  leaving  only  a  thin  strip  of  coast  along  its 
southern  edge.  This  coast  was  guarded  by  a  great  fortress 
which  occupied  the  spot  now  called  Pevensey,  the  future 
landing-place  of  the  Norman  Conqueror.  The  fall  of  this 
fortress  of  Anderida  in  491  established  the  kingdom  of  the 
South-Saxons  ;  "  vElle  and  Cissa,"  ran  the  pitiless  record  of 
the  conquerors,  ''beset  Anderida,  and  slew  all  that  were 
therein,  nor  was  there  afterward s.one  Briton  left."  Another 
tribe  of  Saxons  was  at  the  same  time  conquering  on  the 
other  side  of  Kent,  to  the  north  of  the  estuary  of  the 
Thames,  and  had  founded  the  settlement  of  the  East-Saxons, 
as  these  warriors  came  to  be  called,  in  the  valleys  of  the 
Colne  and  the  Stour.  To  the  northward  of  the  Stour,  the 
work  of  conquest  was  taken  up  by  the  third  of  the  tribes 


14  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

whom  we  have  seen  dwelling  in  their  German  homeland, 
whose  name  was  destined  to  absorb  that  of  Saxon  or  Jute, 
and  to  stamp  itself  on  the  land  they  won.  These  were  the 
Engle,  or  Englishmen.  Their  first  descents  seem  to  have 
fallen  on  the  great  district  which  was  cut  off  from  the  rest 
of  Britain  by  the  Wash  and  the  Fens  and  long  reaches  of 
forest,  the  later  East  Anglia,  where  the  conquerors  settled 
as  the  North-folk  and  the  South-folk,  names  still  preserved 
to  us  in  the  modern  counties.  With  this  settlement  the 
first  stage  in  the  conquest  was  complete.  By  the  close  of 
the  fifth  century  the  whole  coast  of  Britain,  from  the  Wash 
to  Southampton  Water,  was  in  the  hands  of  the  invaders. 
As  yet,  however,  the  enemy  had  touched  little  more  than 
the  coast ;  great  masses  of  woodland  or  of  fen  still  prisoned 
the  Engle,  the  Saxon,  and  the  Jute  alike  within  narrow 
limits.  But  the  sixth  century  can  hardly  have  been  long 
begun  when  each  of  the  two  peoples  who  had  done  the  main 
work  of  conquest  opened  a  fresh  attack  on  the  flanks  of  the 
tract  they  had  won.  On  its  northern  flank  the  Engle  ap- 
peared in  the  estuaries  of  the  Forth  and  of  the  Humber. 
On  its  western  flank,  the  Saxons  appeared  in  the  Southamp- 
ton Water. 

The  true  conquest  of  Southern  Britain  was  reserved  for  a 
fresh  band  of  Saxons,  a  tribe  whose  older  name  was  that  of  the 
Conquest  of  Gewissas,  but  who  were  to  be  more  widely  known 
Southern  as  the  West-Saxons.  Landing  westward  of  the 
Britain,  strip  of  coast  which  has  been  won  by  the  war- 
bands  of  JElle,  they  struggled  under  Cerdic  and  Cynric  up 
from  Southampton  Water  in  495  to  the  great  downs  where 
Winchester  offered  so  rich  a  prize.  Five  thousand  Britons 
fell  in' a  fight  which  opened  the  country  to  these  invaders, 
and  a  fresh  victory  at  Charford  in  519  set  the  crown  of  the 
West-Saxons  on  the  head  of  Cerdic.  We  know  little  of  the 
incidents  of  these  conquests ;  nor  do  we  know  why  at  this 
juncture  they  seem  to  have. been  suddenly  interrupted.  But 
it  is  certain  that  a  victory  of  the  Britons  at  Mount  Badon  in 
the  year  520  checked  the  progress  of  the  West-Saxons,  and 
was  followed  by  a  long  pause  in  their  advance  ;  for  thirty 
years  the  great  belt  of  woodland  which  then  curved  round 
from  Dorset  to  the  valley  of  the  Thames  seems  to  have 
barred  the  way  of  the  assailants,  What  finally  broke  their 


BKITATN      — 

in  the  midst  of 

THE   ENGLISH  CONQUEST 
Sot.o'Mlfc. 


THE   ENGLISH   CONQUEST.      449  TO   577.  15 

inaction  we  cannot  tell.  We  only  know  that  Cynric,  whom 
Cerdic's  death  left  king  of  the  West-Saxons,  again  took  up 
the  work  of  invasion  by  a  new  advance  in  552.  The  capture 
of  the  hill-fort  of  Old  Sarum  threw  open  the  reaches  of  the 
Wiltshire  Downs  ;  and  pushing  northward  to  a  new  battle  at 
Barbury  Hill,  they  completed  the  conquest  of  the  Marl- 
borough  Downs.  From  the  bare  uplands  the  invaders  turned 
eastward  to  the  richer  valleys  of  our  Berkshire,  and  after  a 
battle  with  the  Kentish  men  at  Wimbledon,  the  land  south 
of  the  Thames  which  now  forms  our  Surrey  was  added  to 
their  dominions.  The  road  along  the  Thames  was  however 
barred  to  them,  for  the  district  round  London  seems  to  have 
been  already  won  and  colonized  by  the  East-Saxons.  But  a 
march  of  the  King  Cuthwulf  made  them  masters  in  571  of 
the  districts  which  now  form  Oxfordshire  and  Buckingham- 
shire ;  and  a  few  years  later  they  swooped  from  the  Wiltshire 
uplands  on  the  rich  prey  that  lay  along  the  Severn.  Glou- 
cester, Cirencester,  and  Bath,  cities  which  had  leagued  under 
their  British  kings  to  resist  this  onset,  became  the  spoil  of  a 
Saxon  victory  at  Deorham  in  577,  and  the  line  of  the  great 
western  river  lay  open  to  the  arms  of  the  conquerors.  Under 
a  new  king,  Ceawlin,  the  West-Saxons  penetrated  to  the 
borders  of  Chester,  and  Uriconium,  a  town  beside  the  Wrekin, 
recently  again  brought  to  light,  went  up  in  flames.  A  Brit- 
ish poet  sings  piteously  the  death-song  of  Uriconium,  "  the 
white  town  in  the  valley,"  the  town  of  white  stone  gleaming 
among  the  green  woodland,  the  hall  of  its  chieftain  left 
"without  fire,  without  light,  without  songs/'  the  silence 
broken  only  by  the  eagle's  scream,  "the  eagle  who  has  swal- 
lowed fresh  drink,  heart's  blood  of  Kyndylan  the  fair." 
The  raid,  however,  was  repulsed,  and  the  blow  proved  fatal 
to  the  power  of  Wessex.  Though  the  West-Saxons  were 
destined  in  the  end  to  win  the  overlordship  over  every  Eng- 
lish people,  their  time  had  not  come  yet,  and  the  leadership 
of  the  English  race  was  to  fall,  for  nearly  a  century  to  come,  to 
the  tribes  of  invaders  whose  fortunes  we  have  now  to  follow. 
Rivers  were  the  natural  inlets  by  which  the  northern 
pirates  everywhere  made  their  way  into  the  heart  of  Europe. 
In  Britain  the  fortress  of  London  barred  their  way  conquest  of 
along  the  Thames  from  its  mouth,  and  drove  Mid-Britain 
them,  as  we  have  seen,  to  advance  along  the  south-  and  the  North. 


16  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ern  coast  and  over  the  downs  of  Wiltshire,  before  reaching  its 
upper  waters.  But  the  river  which  united  in  the  estuary  of 
the  Humber  led  like  open  highways  into  the  heart  of  Bri- 
tain, and  it  was  by  this  inlet  that  the  great  mass  of  the  in- 
vaders penetrated  into  the  interior  of  the  island.  Like  the 
invaders  of  East  Anglia,  they  were  of  the  English  tribe  from 
Sleswick.  As  the  storm  fell  in  the  opening  of  the  sixth  cen- 
tury on  the  Wolds  of  Lincolnshire  that  stretch  southward 
from  the  Humber,  the  conquerors  who  settled  in  the  deserted 
country  were  known  as  the  ''"  Lindiswara,"  or  "dwellers 
about  Lindum."  A  part  of  the  warridrs  who  had  entered 
the  Humber,  turned  southward  by  the  forest  of  Elmet  which 
covered  the  district  around  Leeds,  followed  the  course  of 
the  Trent.  Those  who  occupied  the  wooded  country  between 
the  Trent  and  the  Humber  took  from  their  position  the  name 
of  Southumbrians-.  A  second  division,  advancing  along  the 
curve  of  the  former  river  and  creeping  down  the  line  of  its 
tributary,  the  Soar,  till  they  reached  Leicester,  became 
known  as  the  Middle-English.  The  marshes  of  the  Fen 
country  were  settled  by  tribes  known  as  the  Gyrwas.  The 
head  waters  of  the  Trent  were  the  seat  of  those  invaders  who 
penetrated  furthest  to  the  west,  and  camped  round  Lichfield 
and  Eepton.  This  country  became  the  borderland  between 
Englishmen  and  Britons,  and  the  settlers  bore  the  name  of 
"  Mercians,"  men,  that  is,  of  the  March  or  border.  We 
know  hardly  anything  of  this  conquest  of  Mid-Britain,  and 
little  more  of  the  conquest  of  the  North.  Under  the  Komans, 
political  power  had  centered  in  the  vast  district  between  the 
Humber  and  the  Forth.  York  had  been  the  capital  of  Bri- 
tain and  the  seat  of  the  Koman  prefect  :  and  the  bulk  of  the 
garrison  maintained  in  the  island  lay  cantoned  along  the 
Roman  wall.  Signs  of  wealth  and  prosperity  appeared  every- 
where ;  cities  rose  beneath  the  shelter  of  the  Roman  camps ; 
villas  of  British  landowners  studded  the  vale  of  the  Cuse 
and  the  far-off  uplands  of  the  Tweed,  where  the  shepherd 
trusted  fo*r  security  against  Pictish  marauders  to  the  terror 
of  the  Roman  name.  This  district  was  assailed  at  once  from 
the  north  and  from  the  south.  A  part  of  the  invading  force 
which  entered  the  Humber  marched  over  the  Yorkshire 
wolds  to  found  a  kingdom,  which  was  known  as  that  of  the 
Deiri,  in  the  fens  of  Holderness  and  on  the  chalk  downs  east- 


THE  ENGLISH   CONQUEST.    449   TO   577.  17 

ward  of  York.  But  they  were  soon  drawn  onwards,  and 
after  a  struggle  of  which  we  know  nothing,  York,  like  its 
neighboring  cities,  lay  a  desolate  ruin,  while  the  conquerors 
spread  northward,  slaying  and  burning  along  the  valley  of 
the  Ouse.  Meanwhile  the  pirates  had  appeared  in  the  forth, 
and  won  their  way  along  the  Tweed  ;  Ida  and  the  men  of 
fifty  keels  which  followed  him  reared  the  capital  of  the 
northernmost  kingdom  of  the  English,  that  of  Bernicia,  on 
the  rock  of  Bamborough,  and  won  their  way  slowly  along 
the  coast  against  a  stubborn  resistance  which  formed  the 
theme  of  British  songs.  The  strife  between  the  kingdoms 
of  Deira  and  Bernicia  for  supremacy  in  the  Xorth  was  closed 
by  their  being  united  under  King  JEthelric  of  Bernicia ; 
and  from  this  union  was  formed  a  new  kingdom,  the  king- 
dom of  Xorthumbria. 

It  was  this  century  of  conquest  by  the  English  race 
which  really  made  Britain  England.  In  our  anxiety  to 
know  more  of  our  fathers,  we  listen  to  the  monot- 
onous plaint  of  Gildas,  the  one  writer  whom  Gildas. 
Britain  has  left  us,  with  a  strange  disappoint- 
ment. Gildas  has  seen  the  invasion  of  the  pirate  hosts* 
and  it  is  to  him  we  owe  our  knowledge  of  the  conquest 
of  Kent.  But  we  look  in  vain  to  his  book  for  any  account 
of  the  life  or  settlement  of  the  English  conquerors.  Across 
the  border  of  the  new  England  that  was  growing  up  along 
the  southern  shores  of  Britain,  Gildas  gives  us  but  a  glimpse 
— doubtless  he  had  but  a  glimpse  himself — of  forsaken  walls, 
of  shrines  polluted  by  heathen  impiety.  His  silence  and 
his  ignorance  mark  the  character  of  the  struggle.  NO 
British  neck  had  as  yet  bowed  before  the  English  invader, 
no  British  pen  was  to  record  his  conquest.  A  century  after 
their  landing  the  English  are  still  known  to  their  British 
foes  only  as  "barbarians,"  "wolves,"  "dogs,"  "whelps 
from  the  kennels  of  barbarism,"  "  hateful  to  god  and  man." 
Their  victories  seemed  victories  of  tiie  powers  of  evil,  chas- 
tisements of  a  divine  justice  for  national  sin.  Their  ravage, 
terrible  as  it  had  boon,  was  held  to  be  almost  at  an  end  ; 
in  another  century — so  ran  old  prophecies — their  last  hold 
on  the  land  would  be  shaken  off.  But  of  submission  to,  or 
even  of  intercourse  with  the  strangers  there  is  not  a  word. 
Gildaa  tells  us  nothing  of  their  fortunes,  or  of  their  leaders. 

2 


18        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

In  spite  of  his  silence,  however,  we  may  still  know  some- 
thing of  the  way  in  which  the  'new  English  society  grew  up 
in  the  conquered  country,  for  the  driving  back  of 
*ne  Briton  was  but  the  prelude  to  the  settlement 
of  his  conqueror.  What  strikes  us  at  once  in  the 
new  England  is,  that  it  was  the  one  purely  German  nation 
that  rose  upon  the  wreck  of  Home.  In  other  lands,  in  Spain, 
or  Gaul,  or  Italy,  though  they  were  equally  conquered  by 
German  peoples,  religion,  social  life,  administrative  order, 
still  remained  Koman.  In  Britain  alone  Rome  died  into  a 
vague  tradition  of  the  past.  The  whole  organization  of 
government  and  society  disappeared  with  the  people  who 
used  it.  The  villas,  the  mosaics,  the  coins  which  we  dig  up 
in  our  fields  are  no  relics  of  our  English  fathers,  but  of  a 
Eoman  world  which  our  fathers'  sword  iswept  utterly  away. 
Its  law,  its  literature,  its  manners,  its  faith,  went  with  it. 
The  hew  England  was  a  heathen  country.  The  religion  of 
Woden  and  Thunder  triumphed  over  the  religion  of  Christ. 
Alone  among  the  German  assailants  of  Eome  the  English  re- 
jected the  faith  of  the  Empire  they  helped  to  overthrow. 
Elsewhere  the  Christian  priesthood  served  as  mediators  be- 
tween the  barbarian  and  the  conquered,  but  in  the  conquered 
part  of  Britain  Christianity  wholly  disappeared.  River  and 
homestead  and  boundary,  the  very  days  of  the  week,  bore 
the  names  of  the  new  gods  who  displaced  Christ.  But  if 
England  seemed  for  the  moment  a  waste  from  which  all  the 
civilization  of  the  world  had  fled  away,  it  contained  within 
itself  the  germs  of  a  nobler  life  than  that  which  had  been 
destroyed.  The  base  of  the  new  English  society  was  the  free- 
man whom  we  have  seen  tilling,  judging,  or  sacrificing  for 
himself  in  his  far-off  fatherland  by  the  Northern  Sea. 
However  roughly  he  dealt  while  the  struggle  went  on  with 
the  material  civilization  of  Britain,  it  was  impossible  that 
such  a  man  could  be  a  mere  destroyer.  War  was  no  sooner 
over  than  the  warrior  settled  down  into  a  farmer,  and  the 
home  of  the  peasant  churl  rose  beside  the  heap  of  Goblin- 
haunted  stones  that  marked  the  site  of  the  villa  he  had 
burnt.  Little  knots  of  kinsfolk  drew  together  in  "tun" 
and  "  ham  "  beside  the  Thames  and  the  Trent  as  they  had 
settled  beside  the  Elbe  or  the  Weser,  not  as  kinsfolk  only, 
but  as  dwellers  in  the  same  plot,  knit  together  by  their  com- 


THE   ENGLISH   CONQUEST.      449   TO   577.  19 

mon  holding  withiii  the  same  bounds.  Each  little  village- 
commonwealth  lived  the  same  life  in  Britain  as  its  farmers 
had  lived  at  home.  Each  had  its  moot  hill  or  sacred  tree 
as  a  center,  its  "  mark  "  as  a  border  ;  each  judged  by  witness 
of  the  kinsfolk  and  made  laws  in  the  assembly  of  its  freemen, 
and  chose  the  leaders  for  its  own  governance,  and  the  men 
who  were  to  follow  headman  or  ealdorman  to  hundred-court 
or  war. 

In  more  ways  than  one,  indeed,  the  primitive  organ- 
ization of  English  society  was  affected  by  its  transfer  to 
the  soil  of  Britain.  Conquest  begat  the  King. 
It  is  probable  that  the  English  had  hitherto 
known  nothing  of  kings  in  their  own  father- 
land, where  each  tribe  lived  under  the  rule  of  its  own  cus- 
tomary Ealdorman.  But  in  a  war  such  as  that  which 
they  waged  against  the  Britons  it  was  necessary  to  find  a 
common  leader  whom  the  various  tribes  engaged  in  conquests 
such  as  those  of  Kent  or  Wessex  might  follow ;  and  such  a 
leader  soon  rose  into  a  higher  position  than  that  of  a  tem- 
porary chief.  The  sons  of  Hengest  became  kings  in  Kent ; 
those  of  JEMe  in  Sussex  ;  the  West-Saxons  chose  Cerdic  for 
their  king.  Such  a  choice  at  once  drew  the  various  villages 
and  tribes  of  each  community  closer  together  than  of  old, 
while  the  new  ruler  surrounded  himself  with  a  chosen  war- 
band  of  companions,  servants,  or  "  thegns "  as  they  were 
called,  who  were  rewarded  for  their  service  by  gifts  from 
the  public  land.  Their  distinction  rested,  not  on  hereditary 
rank,  but  on  service  done  to  the  King,  and  they  at  last  be- 
came a  nobility  which  superseded  the  "eorls  "  of  the  origi- 
nal English  constitution.  And  as  war  begat  the  King  and 
the  military  noble,  so  it  all  but  begat  the  slave.  There  had 
always  been  a  slave  class,  a  class  of  the  unfree,  among  the 
English  as  among  all  German  peoples  ;  but  the  numbers  of 
this  class,  if  unaffected  by  the  conquest  of  Britain,  were 
swelled  by  the  wars  which  soon  sprang  up  among  the  Eng- 
lish conquerors.  No  rank  saved  the  prisoner  taken  in  bat- 
tle from  the  doom  of  slavery,  and  slavery  itself  was  often 
welcomed  as  saving  the  prisoner  from  death.  We  see  this  in 
the  story  of  a  noble  warrior  who  had  fallen  wounded  in  a 
fight  between  two  English  tribes,  and  was  carried  as  a  bond- 
slave to  the  house  of  a  thegn  hard  by.  He  declared  himself 


20  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

a  peasant,  but  his  master  penetrated  the  disguise.  "  You 
deserve  death,"  he  said,  "  since  all  my  brothers  and  kinsfolk 
fell  in  the  fight ;  "  but  for  his  oath's  sake  he  spared  his  life 
and  sold  him  to  a  Frisian  at  London,  probably  a  merchant 
such  as  those  who  were  carrying  English  captives  at  that 
time  to  the  market-place  of  Home.  But  war  was  not  the 
only  cause  of  the  increase  of  this  slave  class.  The  number 
of  the  "  unfree  "  were  swelled  by  death  and  crime.  Famine 
drove  men  to  "  bend  their  heads  in  the  evil  days  for  meat ;" 
the  debtor  unable  to  discharge  his  debt  flung  on  the  ground 
the  freeman's  sword  and  spear,  took  up  the  laborer's  mat- 
tock, and  placed  his  head  as  a  slave  within  a  master's  hands. 
The  criminal  whose  kinsfolk  would  not  make  up  his  fine  be- 
came a  crime- serf  of  the  plaintiff  or  the  king.  Sometimes  a 
father,  pressed  by  need,  sold  children  and  wife  into  bondage. 
The  slave  became  part  of  the  live-stock  of  the  estate,  to  be 
willed  away  at  death  with  horse  or  ox  whose  pedigree  was 
kept  as  carefully  as  his  own.  His  children  were  bondsmen 
like  himself  ;  even  the  freeman's  children  by  a  slave-mother 
inherited  the  mother's  taint.  "  Mine  is  the  calf  that  is  born 
of  my  cow,"  ran  the  English  proverb.  The  cabins  of  the  un- 
free clustered  round  the  home  of  the  rich  landowner  as  they 
had  clustered  round  the  villa  of  the  Eoman  gentleman ; 
plowman,  shepherd,  goatherd,  swineherd,  oxherd  and  cow- 
herd, dairymaid,  barnman,  sower,  hayward  and  wood- 
ward, were  often  slaves.  It  was  not  such  a  slavery  as  that 
we  have  known  in  modern  times,  for  stripes  and  bonds  were 
rare ;  if  the  slave  were  slain,  it  was  by  an  angry  blow,  not 
by  the  lash.  But  his  lord  could  slay  him  if  he  would  ;  it 
was  but  a  chattel  the  less.  The  slave  had  no  place  in  the 
justice-court,  no  kinsman  to  claim  vengeance  for  his  wrong. 
If  a  stranger  slew  him,  his  lord  claimed  the  damages ;  if 
guilty  of  wrong-doing,  "his  skin  paid  for  him  "under  the 
lash.  If  he  fled  he  might  be  chased  like  a  strayed  beast,  and 
flogged  to  death  for  his  crime,  Nor  burned  to  death  if  the  slave 
were  a  woman. 


Section  III.— The  Northumbrian  Kingdom,  588—685. 

[Authorities. — Bseda's  "  Historia  Ecclesiastica  Gentis  Anglorum  "  is  the  one 
primary  authority  for  this  period.  I  have  spoken  fully  of  it  and  its  writer  in  the 
text.  The  meager  regnal  and  episcopal  annals  of  the  West-Saxons  have  been 


THE  NORTHUMBRIAN   KINGDOM.      588   TO   685.        '21 

brought  by  numerous  insertions  from  Breda  to  the  shape  in  which  they  at  pres- 
ent appear  in  the  "English  Chronicle."  The  Poem  of  Caedmon  has  been  pub- 
lished by  Mr.  Thorpe,  and  copious  summaries  of  it  are  given  by  Sharon  Turner 
("  Hist,  of  Anglo-Saxons,"  vol.  iii.  cap.  3)  and  Mr.  Moriey  ("  English  Writers," 
vol.  i.)  The  life  of  Wilfrid  by  Eddi,  and  those  of  Cuthbert  by  Breda  and  an  earlier 
contemporary  biographer,  which  are  appended  to  Mr.  Stevenson's  edition  of  the 
"  Historia  Ecclesiastica,"  throw  great  light  on  the  religious  condition  of  the  North. 
For  Guthlac  of  Crowland,  see  the  "  Acto  Sanctorum  v  for  April  xi.  For  Theodore, 
and  the  English  Church  which  he  organized,  see  Kemble  ('•  Saxons  in  England," 
vol.  ii.  cap.  8-10),  and  above  all  the  invaluablere  marks  of  Dr  Stubbs  in  his  con- 
stitutional History. 

The  conquest  of  the  bulk  of  Britain  was  now  complete. 
Eastward  of  a  line  which  may  be  roughly  drawn  along  the 
moorlands  of  Northumberland  and  Yorkshire, 
through  Derbyshire  and  skirting  the  Forest  ol  tfthelberht. 
Arden,  to  the  mouth  of  the  Severn,  and  thence 
by  Mendip  to  the  sea,  the  island  had  passed  into  English 
hands.  From  this  time  the  character  of  the  English  con- 
quest of  Britain  was  wholly  changed.  The  older  wars  of 
extermination  came  to  an  end,  and  as  the  invasion  pushed 
westward  in  later  times  the  Britons  were  no  longer  wholly 
driven  from  the  soil,  but  mingled  with  their  conquerors.  A 
far  more  important  change  was  that  which  was  seen  in  the  at- 
titude of  the  English  conquerors  from  this  time  towards  each 
other.  Freed  to  a  great  extent  from  the  common  pressure 
of  the  war  against  the  Britons,  their  energies  turned  to  com- 
bats with  one  another,  to  a  long  struggle  for  overlordship, 
which  was  to  end  in  bringing  about  a  real  national  unity. 
The  West-Saxons,  beaten  back  from  their  advance  along  the 
Severn  valley,  and  overthrown  in  a  terrible  defeat  at  Fad- 
diley,  were  torn  by  internal  dissensions,  even  while  they  were 
battling  for  life  against  the  Britons.  Strife  between  the  two 
rival  kingdoms  of  Bernicia  and  Deira  in  the  north  absorbed 
the  power  of  the  Engle  in  that  quarter,  till  in  588  the 
strength  of  Deira  suddenly  broke  down,  and  the  Bernioian 
king, /Ethelric,  gathered  the  two  peoples  into  a  realm  which 
was  to  form  the  later  kingdom  of  Xorthumbria.  Amid  tho 
confusion  of  north  and  south,  the  primacy  among  the  con- 
querors was  seized  by  Kent,  where  the  kingdom  of  the  Jutes 
rose  suddenly  into  greatness  under  a  king  called  ^Ethelberht. 
who  before  597  established  his  supremacy  over  the  Saxons  of 
Middlesex  and  Essex,  as  well  as  over  the  English  of  East 
Anglia  and  of  Mercia  as  far  north  as  the  Humber  and  ih'- 
Trent. 


22  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

The  overlordship  of  ^Ethelberht  was  marked  by  a  renewal 
of  that  intercourse  of  Britain  with  the  Continent  which  had 
been  broken  off  by  the  conquests  of  the  English. 
His  marriage  with  Bertha,  the  daughter  of  the 
Frankish  King  Charibert  of  Paris,  created  a 
fresh  tie  between  the  Kent  and  Gaul.  But  the  union  had  far 
more  important  results  than  those  of  which  ^Ethelberht  may 
have  dreamed.  Bertha,  like  her  Frankish  kinsfolk,  was  a 
Christian.  A  Christian  bishop  accompanied  her  from  Gaul 
to  Canterbury,  the  royal  city  of  the  kingdom  of  Kent ;  and 
a  ruined  Christian  church,the  church  of  St.  Martin,  was  given 
them  for  their  worship.  The  marriage  of  Bertha  was  an 
opportunity  which  was  at  once  seized  by  the  bishop  who  at 
this  time  occupied  the  Koman  See,  and  who  is  justly  known 
as  Gregory  the  great.  A  memorable  story  tells  us  how, 
when  but  a  young  Koman  deacon,  Gregory  had  noted  the 
white  bodies,  the  fair  faces,  the  golden  hair  of  some  youths 
who  stood  bound  in  the  market-place  of  Eome.  ' '  From 
what  country  do  these  slaves  come  ?"  he  asked  the  traders 
who  brought  them.  "  They  are  English,  Angles  !  "  the 
slave-dealers  answered.  The  deacon's  pity  veiled  itself  in 
poetic  humor.  "Not  Angles  but  Angels,"  he  said,  "with 
faces  so  angel-like  !  From  what  country  come  they  ? " 
"They  come,"  said  the  merchants,  "from  Deira."  "De 
ira  ! "  was  the  untranslateable  reply;  "aye,  plucked  from 
God's  ire,  and  called  to  Christ's  mercy  !  And  what  is  the 
name  of  their  king  ?  "  "  ^Ella,"  they  told  him  ;  and  Gregory 
seized  on  the  words  as  of  good  omen.  "Alleluia  shall  be 
sung  in  ^Ella's  land  ! "  he  cried,  and  passed  on,  musing  how 
the  angel-faces  should  be  brought  to  sing  it.  Only  three  or 
four  years  had  gone  by,  when  the  deacon  had  become  Bishop 
of  Eome,  and  Bertha's  marriage  gave  him  the  opening  he 
sought.  After  cautious  negotiations  with  the  rulers  of  Gaul, 
he  sent  a  Eoman  abbot,  Augustine,  at  the  head  of  a  band  of 
monks,  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  English  people.  The 
missionaries  landed  in  597  on  the  very  spot  where  Hengest 
had  landed  more  than  a  century  before  in  the  Isle  of  Thanet ; 
and  the  king  received  them  sitting  in  the  open  air  on  the 
chalk-down  above  Minster,  where  the  eye  nowadays  catches 
miles  away  over  the  marshes  the  dim  tower  of  Canterbury. 
He  listened  to  the  long  sermon  as  the  interpreters  whom 


THE   NORTHUMBRIAN    KINGDOM.      588   TO   685.        23 

Augustine  had  brought  with  him  from  Gaul  translated  it. 
"Your  words  are  fair,"  ./Ethelberht  replied  at  last  with 
English  good  sense,  "  but  they  are  new  and  of  doubtful 
meaning ; "  for  himself,  he  said,  he  refused  to  forsake  the 
gods  of  his  fathers,  but  he  promised  shelter  and  protection 
to  the  strangers.  The  band  of  monks  entered  Canterbury 
bearing  before  them  a  silver  cross  with  a  picture  of  Christ, 
and  singing  in  concert  the  strains  of  the  litany  of  their 
church.  ''Turn  from  this  city,  Lord,"  they  sang,  "Thine 
anger  and  wrath,  and  turn  it  from  Thy  holy  house,  for  we 
have  sinned."  And  then  in  strange  contrast  came  the  jubi- 
lant cry  of  the  old  Hebrew  worship,  the  cry  which  Gregory 
had  wrested  in  prophetic  earnestness  from  the  name  of  the 
Yorkshire  king  in  the  Roman  market-place,  "Allelulia  !" 

It  is  strange  that  the  spot  which  witnessed  the  landing  of 
Hengest  should  be  yet  better  known  as  the  landing-place  of 
Augustine.  But  the  second  landing  at  Ebbsfleet  Reanion  Of 
was  in  no  small  measure  the  reversal  and  undoing  England  and 
of  the  first.  "Strangers  from  Rome  "was  the  &*  Western 
title  with  which  the  missionaries  first  fronted 
the  English  king.  The  march  of  the  monks  as  they  chanted 
their  solemn  litany  was,  in  one  sense,  the  return  of  the 
Roman  legions  who  had  retired  at  the  trumpet-call  of  Alaric. 
It  was  to  the  tongue  and  the  thought  not  of  Gregory  only 
but  of  such  men  as  his  own  Jutish  fathers  had  slaughtered 
and  driven  over  sea  that  Ethelberht  listened  in  the  preaching 
of  Augustine.  Canterbury,  the  earliest  royal  city  of  the  new 
England,  became  the  center  of  Latin  influence.  The  Roman 
tongue  became  again  one  of  the  tongues  of  Britain,  the 
language  of  its  worship,  its  correspondence,  its  literature. 
But  more  than  the  tongue  of  Rome  returned  with  Augustine. 
Practically  his  landing  renewed  the  union  with  the  western 
world  which  the  landing  of  Hengest  had  all  but  destroyed. 
The  new  England  was  admitted  into  the  older  commonwealth 
of  nations.  The  civilization,  arts,  letters,  which  had  fled 
before  the  sword  of  the  English  conquest,  returned  with  the 
Christian  faith.  The  fabric  of  the  Roman  law  indeed 
never  took  root  in  England,  but  it  is  impossible  not  to 
recognize  the  result  of  the  influence  of  the  Roman  mis- 
sionaries in  the  fact  that  the  codes  of  customary  English 
law  began  to  be  put  into  writing  soon  after  their  arrival. 


24        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

As  yet  these  great  results  were  still  distant ;  a  year  passed 
before  ^Ethelberht  yielded,  and  though  after  his  conversion 

thousands  of  the  Kentish  men  crowded  to  bap- 
Fall  of  Kent,  tism,  it  was  years  before  he  ventured  to  urge 

the  under-kings  of  Essex  and  East  Anglia  to  re- 
ceive the  creed  of  their  overlord.  This  effort  of  ^Ethelberht 
however  only  heralded  a  revolution  which  broke  the  power  of 
Kent  forever.  The  tribes  of  Mid-Britain  revolted  against 
his  supremacy,  and  gathered  under  the  overlordship  of 
Kaedwald  of  East  Anglia.  The  revolution  clearly  marked 
the  change  which  had  passed  over  Britain.  Instead  of  a 
chaos  of  isolated  peoples,  the  conquerors  were  now  in  fact 
gathered  into  three  great  groups.  The  Engle  kingdom  of 
the  north  reached  from  the  Humber  to  the  Forth.  The 
southern  kingdom  of  the  West-Saxons  stretched  from  Wat- 
ling  Street  to  the  Channel.  And  between  these  was  roughly 
sketched  out  the  great  kingdom  of  Mid-Britain,  which,  how- 
ever its  limits  might  vary,  retained  a  substantial  identity 
from  the  time  of  JEthelberht  till  the  final  fall  of  the  Mercian 
kings.  For  the  next  two  hundred  years  the  history  of 
England  lies  in  the  struggle  of  Northumbrian,  Mercian,  and 
West-Saxon  kings  to  establish  their  supremacy  over  the 
general  mass  of  Englishmen,  and  unite  them  in  a  single 
England. 

In  this  struggle  the  lead  was  at  once  taken  by  Northum- 
bria,  which  was  rising  into  a  power  that  set  all  rivalry  at 

defiance.     Under  ^Ethelfrith,  who  had  followed 
.Ethelfrith.  ^Ethelric  in  593,  the  work  of  conquest  went  on 

rapidly.'  In  603  the  forces  of  the  northern  Brit- 
ons were  annihilated  in  a  great  battle  at  Daegsastan,  and  the 
rule  of  Northumbria  was  established  from  the  Humber  of 
the  Forth.  Along  the  west  of  Britain  there  stretched  the 
unconquered  kingdoms  of  Strathclyde  and  Cumbria,  which 
extended  from  the  river  Clyde  to  the  Dee,  and  the  smaller 
British  states  which  occupied  what  we  now  call  Wales. 
Chester  formed  the  link  between  these  two  bodies ;  and  it 
was  Chester  that  ^Ethelfrith  chose  in  613  for  his  next  point 
of  attack.  Some  miles  from  the  city  two  thousand  monks 
were  gathered  in  the  monastery  of  Bangor,  and  after  implor- 
ing in  a  three  days'  fast  the  help  of  Heaven  for  their  coun- 
try, a  crowd  of  these  ascetics  followed  the  British  army  to 


THE   NORTHUMBRIAN   KINGDOM.      588   TO   685.        25 

the  field.  ^Ethelfrith  watched  the  wild  gestures  and  out- 
stretched arms  of  the  strange  Company  as  it  stood  apart, 
intent  upon  prayer,  and  took  the  monks  for  enchanters. 
"  Bear  they  arms  or  no,"  said  the  king,  "  they  war  against 
us  when  they  cry  against  us  to  their  God,"  and  in  the  sur- 
prise and  rout  which  followed  the  monks  were  the  first  to 
fall. 

The  British  kingdoms  were  now  utterly  parted  from  one 
another.  By  their  victory  at  Deorham  the  West-Saxons  had 
cut  off  the  Britons  of  Devon  and  Cornwall  from  the  general 
body  of  their  race.  By  his  victory  at  Chester  ^Ethelfrith 
broke  this  body  again  into  two  several  parts,  by  parting  the 
Britons  of  Wales  from  those  of  Cumbria  and  Strathclyde. 
From  this  time  the  warfare  of  Briton  and  Englishman  died 
down  into  a  warfare  of  separate  English  kingdoms  against 
separate  British  kingdoms,  of  Nortlmmbria  against  Cumbria 
and  Strathclyde,  of  Mercia  against  modern  Wales,  of  Wessex 
against  the  tract  of  British  country  from  Mendip  to  the 
Land's  End.  Nor  was  the  victory  of  Chester  of  less  im- 
portance to  England  itself.  With  it  ^Ethelfrith  was  at  once 
drawn  to  new  dreams  of  ambition  as  he  looked  across  his 
southern  border,  where  Rsedwald  of  East  Anglia  was  draw- 
ing the  peoples  of  Mid-Britain  under  his  overlordship. 

The  inevitable  struggle  between  East  Anglia  and  North- 
umbria  seemed  for  a  time  averted  by  the  sudden  death  of 
^thelfrith.  Marching  in  617  against  Rsedwald, 
who  had  sheltered  Eadwine,  an  exile  from  the 
Northumbrian  kingdom,  he  perished  in  a  defeat 
at  the  river  Idle.  Eadwine  mounted  the  Northumbrian 
throne  on  the  fall  of  his  enemy,  and  carried  on  the  work  of 
government  with  an  energy  as  ceaseless  as  that  of  ^Ethel- 
frith  himself.  His  victories  over  Pict  and  Briton  were 
followed  by  the  winning  of  lordship  over  the  English  of 
Mid-Britain  ;  Kent  was  bound  to  him  in  close  political  alli- 
ance ;  and  the  English  conquerors  of  the  south,  the  people 
of  the  West-Saxons,  alone  remained  independent.  But  re- 
volt and  slaughter  had  fatally  broken  the  power  of  the  West- 
Saxons  when  the  Northumbrians  attacked  them.  A  story 
preserved  by  Baeda  tells  something  of  the  fierceness  of  the 
struggle  which  ended  in  the  subjection  of  the  south  to  the 
overlordship  of  Northumbria.  Eadwine  gave  audience  in 


26  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

an  Eastern  court  which  he  held  in  a  king's  town  near  the 
river  Derwent  to  Eumer,  an  envoy  of  Wessex,  who  brought 
a  message  from  its  king.  In  the  midst  of  the  conference 
the  envoy  started  to  his  feet,  drew  a  dagger  from  his  robe, 
and  rushed  madly  on  the  Northumbrian  sovereign.  Lilla, 
one  of  the  king's  war-band,  threw  himself  between  Eadwine 
and  his  assassin ;  but  so  furious  was  the  stroke  that  even 
through  Lilla's  body  the  dagger  still  reached  its  aim.  The 
king  however  recovered  from  his  wound  to  march  on  the 
West-Saxons ;  he  slew  and  subdued  all  who  had  conspired 
against  him,  and  returned  victorious  to  his  own  country. 
The  greatness  of  Northumbria  now  reached  its  height. 
Within  his  own  dominions  Eadwine  displayed  a  genius  for 
civil  government  which  shows  how  completely  the  mere  age 
of  conquest  had  passed  away.  With  him  began  the  English 
proverb  so  often  applied  to  after  kings,  "  A  woman  with  her 
babe  might  walk  scatheless  from  sea  to  sea  in  Eadwine's 
day."  Peaceful  communication  revived  along  the  deserted 
highways ;  the  springs  by  the  roadside  were  marked  with 
stakes,  and  a  cup  of  brass  set  beside  each  for  the  traveler's 
refreshment.  Some  faint  traditions  of  the  Eoman  past  may 
have  flung  their  glory  round  this  new  "  Empire  of  the 
English  ;  "  some  of  its  majesty  had  at  any  rate  come  back 
with  its  long-lost  peace.  A  royal  standard  of  purple  and 
gold  floated  before  Eadwine  as  he  rode  through  the  villages  ; 
a  feather-tuft  attached  to  a  spear,  the  Eoman  tufa,  preceded 
him  as  he  walked  through  the  streets.  The  Northumbrian 
king  was  in  fact  supreme  over  Britain  as  no  king  of  English 
blood  had  been  before.  Northward  his  frontier  reached  the 
Forth,  and  was  guarded  by  a  city  which  bore  his  name, 
Edinburgh,  Eadwine's  burgh,  the  city  of  Eadwine.  AVest- 
ward,  he  was  master  of  Chester,  and  the  fleet  he  equipped 
there  subdued  the  isles  of  Anglesey  and  Man.  South  of  the 
Humber  he  was  owned  as  overlord  by  the  whole  English 
race,  save  Kent ;  and  even  Kent  was  bound  to  him  by  his 
marriage  with  its  king's  sister. 

With  the  Kentish  queen  came  Paulinus,  one  of  Augustine's 

followers,  whose  tall  stooping  form,  slender  aquiline  nose, 

Conversion  an^  black  hair  falling  round  a  thin  worn  face, 

of  North-    were  long  remembered  in  the  north  ;  and  the 

umbria.     Wise  Men  of  Northumbria  gathered,  to  deliberate 


THE  NORTHUMBRIAN    KINGDOM.      588  TO   U86.        27 

on  the  new  faith  to  which  Paulinas  and  his  queen  soon  con- 
verted Eadwine.  To  finer  minds  its  charm  lay  in  the  light 
it  threw  on  the  darkness  which  encompassed  men's  lives,  the 
darkness  of  the  future  as  of  the  past.  "  So  seems  the  life 
of  man,  0  king,"  burst  forth  an  aged  Ealdorman,  "  as  a 
sparrow's  flight  through  the  hall  when  you  are  sitting  at  meat 
in  winter-tide,  with  the  warm  fire  lighted  on  the  hearth,  but 
the  icy  rain-storm  without.  The  sparrow  flies  in  at  one  door 
and  tarries  for  a  moment  in  the  light  and  heat  of  the  hearth- 
fire,  and  then  flying  forth  from  the  other  vanishes  into  the 
wintry  darkness  whence  it  came.  So  tarries  for  a  moment 
the  life  of  a  man  in  aur  sight,  but  what  is  before  it,  what 
after  it,  we  know  not.  If  this  new  teaching  tells  us  aught 
certainly  of  these,  let  us  follow  it."  Coar'ser  argument  told 
on  the  crowd.  "None  of  your  people,  Eadwine,  have 
worshiped  the  gods  more  busily  than  I,"  said  Coifi  the 
priest,  "yet  there  are  many  more  favored  and  more  for- 
tunate. Were  these  gods  good  for  anything  they  would 
help  their  worshipers."  Then  leaping  on  horseback,  he 
hurled  his  spear  into  the  sacred  temple  at  Godmanham, 
and  with  the  rest  of  the  Witan  embraced  the  religion  of 
the  king. 

But  the  faith  of  Woden  and  Thunder  was  not  to  fall  without 
a  struggle.  Even  in  Kent  a  reaction  against'  the  new  creed 
began  with  the  death  of  JEthelberht.  Eaedwald 
of  East  Anglia  resolved  to  serve  Christ  and  the 
older  gods  together  ;  and  a  pagan  and  Christian 
altar  fronted  one  another  in  the  same  royal  temple.  The 
young  kings  of  the  East-Saxons  burst  into  the  church  where 
Mellitus,  the  Bishop  of  London,  was  administering  the  Eu- 
charist to  the  people,  crying,  "Give  us  that  white  bread  you 
gave  to  our  father  Saba,"  and  on  the  bishop's  refusal  drove 
him  from  their  realm.  The  tide  of  reaction  was  checked 
for  a  time  by  Eadwine's  conversion,  until  Mercia  sprang  into 
a  sudden  greatness  as  the  champion  of  the  heathen  gods. 
Under  Eadwine  Mercia  had  submitted  to  the  lordship  of 
Korthumbria  ;  but  its  king,  Penda,  saw  in  the  rally  of  the 
old  religion  a  chance  of  winning  back  its  independence. 
Penda  had  not  only  united  under  his  own  rule  the  Mercians 
of  the  Upper  Trent,  the  Middle-English  of  Leicester,  the 
Southumbrians,  and  the  Liudiswaras,  but  he  had  even  been 


HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PKOl'LK. 

strong  enough  to  tear  from  the  West-Saxons  their  possessions 
along  the  Severn.  So  thoroughly  indeed  was  the  union 
of  these  provinces  effected,  that  though  some  were  detached 
for  a  time  after  Penda's  death,  the  name  of  Mercia  from  this 
moment  must  be  generally  taken  as  covering  the  whole  of 
them.  Alone,  however,  he  was  as  yet  no  match  for  Xorth- 
umbria.  But  the  old  severance  between  the  English  people 
and  the  Britons  was  fast  dying  down,  and  Penda  boldly 
broke  through  the  barrier  which  parted  the  two  races,  and 
allied  himself  with  the  Welsh  king,  Cadwallon,  in  an  attack 
on  Eadwine.  The  armies  met  in  633  at  Hatfield,  and  in  the 
fight  which  followed  Eadwine  was  defeated  and  slain.  The 
victory  was  turned  to  profit  by  the  ambition  of  Penda,  while 
Northumbria  was  -torn  with  the  strife  which  followed  Ead- 
wine's  fall.  To  complete  his  dominion  over  Mid-Britain, 
Penda  marched  against  East  Anglia.  The  East  Angle  had 
returned  to  heathendom  from  the  oddly  mingled  religion  of 
their  first  Christian  king,  Eaedwald  ;  but  the  new  faith  was 
brought  back  by  the  present  king,  Sigeberht.  Before  the 
threat  of  Penda's  attack  Sigeberht  left  his  throne  for  a 
monastery,  but  his  people  dragged  him  again  from  his  cell 
on  the  news  of  Penda's  invasion  in  634,  in  faith  that  his 
presence  would  bring  them  the  favor  of  Heaven.  The  monk- 
king  was  set  in  the  forefront  of  the  battle,  but  he  would  bear 
no  weapon  save  a  wand,  and  his  fall  was  followed  by  the  rout 
of  his  army  and  the  submission  of  his  kingdom.  Meanwhile 
Cadwallon  remained  harrying  in  the  heart  of  Deira,  and  made 
himself  master  even  of  York.  But  the  triumph  of  the  Brit- 
ons was  as  brief  as  it  was  strange.  Oswald,  a  second  son  of 
^Ethelfrith,  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  his  race,  and  a 
small  Northumbrian  force  gathered  in  635  under  their  new 
king  near  the  Eoman  Wall.  Oswald  set  up  a  cross  of  wood 
as  his  standard,  holding  it  with  his  own  hands  till  the  hollow 
in  which  it  was  fixed  was  filled  in  by  his  soldiers  ;  then  throw- 
ing himself  on  his  knees,  he  cried  to  his  host  to  pray  to 
the  living  God.  Cadwallon,  the  last  great  hero  of  the 
British  race,  fell  fighting  on  the  "  Heaven's  Field,"  as 
after  times  called  the  field  of  battle,  and  for  seven  years 
the  power  of  Oswald  equaled  that  of  ^Ethelfrith  and 
Eadwine. 


THE   NORTHUMBRIAN   KINGDOM.      588   TO   685.         29 

It  was  not  the  Church  of  Paulinas  which  nerved  Oswald 
to  this  struggle  for  the  Cross.  Paulinus  had  fled  from 
Northumbria  at  Eadwine's  fall ;  and  the  Koman 
Church  in  Kent  shrank  into  inactivity  before  the 
heathen  reaction.  Its  place  in  the  conversion  of 
England  was  taken  by  missionaries  from  Ireland.  To  under- 
stand, however,  the  true  meaning  of  the  change,  we  must 
remember  that  before  the  landing  of  the  English  in  Britain, 
the  Christian  Church  comprised  every  country,  save  Ger- 
many in  Western  Europe,  as  far  as  Ireland  itself.  The  con- 
quest of  Britain  by  the  pagan  English  thrust  a  wedge  of 
heathendom  into  the  heart  of  this  great  communion  and 
broke  it  into  two  unequal  parts.  On  the  one  side  lay  Italy, 
Spain,  and  Gaul,  whose  Churches  owned  obedience  to  the 
See  of  Rome,  on  the  other  the  Church  of  Ireland.  But  the 
condition,of  the  two  portions  of  Western  Christendom  was 
very  different.  While  the  vigor  of  Christianity  in  Italy 
and  Gaul  and  Spain  was  exhausted  in  a  bare  struggle  for 
life,  Ireland,  which  remained  unsco urged  by  invaders,  drew 
from  its  conversion  an  energy  such  as  it  has  never  known 
since.  Christianity  had  been  received  there  with  a  burst  of 
popular  enthusiasm,  and  letters  and  arts  sprang  up  rapidly 
in  its  train.  The  science  and  Biblical  knowledge  which  fled 
from  the  Continent  took  refuge  in  famous  schools  which 
made  Durrow  and  Armagh  the  universities  of  the  West. 
The  new  Christian  life  soon  beat  too  strongly  to  brook  con- 
finement within  the  bounds  of  Ireland  itself.  Patrick,  the 
first  missionary  of  the  island,  had  not  been  half  a  century 
dead  when  Irish  Christianity  flung  itself  with  a  fiery  zeal 
into  battle  with  the  mass  of  heathenism  which  was  rolling 
in  upon  the  Christian  world.  Irish  missionaries  labored 
among  the  Picts  of  the  Highlands  and  among  the  Frisians 
of  the  northern  seas.  An  Irish  missionary,  Columban, 
founded  monasteries  in  Burgundy  and  the  Apennines.  The 
canton  of  St.  Gall  still  commemorates  in  its  name  another 
Irish  missionary  before  whom  the  spirits  of  flood  and  fell 
fled  wailing  over  the  waters  of  the  Lake  of  Constance.  For 
a  time  it  seemed  as  if  the  course  of  the  world's  history  was 
to  be  changed,  as  if  the  older  Celtic  race  that  Roman  and 
German  had  swept  before  them  had  turned  to  the  moral 
conquest  of  their  conquerors,  as  if  Celtic  and  not  Latin 


30  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Christianity  was  to  mold  the  destinies  of  the  Churches  oi 
the  West. 

On  a  low  island  of  barren  gneiss-rock  off  the  west  coast  of 
Scotland  an  Irish  refugee,  Columba,  had  raised  the  famous 
monastery  of  lona.  Oswald  in  youth  found  re- 
Oswald,  fuge  within  its  walls,  and  on  his  accession  to  the 
throne  of  Northumbria  he  called  for  missionaries 
from  among  its  monks.  The  first  despatched  in  answer  to 
his  call  obtained  little  success.  He  declared  on  his  return 
that  among  a  people  so  stubborn  and  barbarous  success  was 
impossible.  "  Was  it  their  stubbornness  or  your  severity  ?  " 
asked  Aidan,  a  brother  sitting  by  ;  "  did  you  forget  God's 
word  to  give  them  the  milk  first  and  then  the  meat  ?"  All 
eyes  turned  on  the  speaker  as  fittest  to  undertake  the  aban- 
doned mission,  and  Aidan  sailing  at  their  bidding  fixed  his 
bishop's  stool  or  see  in  the  island-peninsula  of  Lindisfarne. 
Thence,  from  a  monastery  which  gave  to  the  spot  its  after 
name  of  Holy  Island,  preachers  poured  forth  over  the 
heathen  realms.  Boisil  guided  a  little  troop  of  missionaries 
to  the  valley  of"  the  Tweed.  Aidan  himself  wandered  on 
foot  preaching  among  the  peasants  of  Bernicia.  The  new 
religion  served  as  a  prelude  to  the  Northumbrian  advance. 
If  Oswald  was  a  saint,  he  was  none  the  less  resolved  to  build 
up  again  the  realm  of  Eadwine.  Having  extended  his  supre- 
macy over  the  Britons  of  Strath clyde  and  won  the  submis- 
sion of  the  Lindiswaras,  he  turned  to  reassert  his  supremacy 
over  Wessex.  The  reception  of  the  new  faith  became  the 
mark  of  submission  to  his  overlordship.  A  preacher, 
Birinus,  had  already  penetrated  from  Gaul  into  Wessex  ;  in 
Oswald's  presence  its  king  received  baptism,  and  established 
with  his  assent  a  see  for  his  people  in  the  royal  city  of  Dor- 
chester on  the  Thames.  Oswald  ruled  as  wide  a  realm  as 
his  predecessor  ;  but  for  after  times  the  memory  of  his  great- 
ness was  lost  in  the  legends  of  his  piety.  A  new  conception 
of  kingship  began  to  blend  itself  with  that  of  the  warlike 
glory  of  ^Ethelfrith  or  the  wise  administration  of  Eadwine. 
The  moral  power  which  was  to  reach  its  height  in  Alfred 
first  dawns  in  the  story  of  Oswald.  In  his  own  court  the 
king  acted  as  interpreter  to  the  Irish  missionaries  in  their 
efforts  to  convert  his  thegns.  "  By  reason  of  his  constant 
habit  of  praying  or  giviiig  thanks  to  the  Lord  he  was  wont 


THE   NORTHUMBRIAN   KINGDOM.      588   TO   685.          31 

wherever  he  sat  to  hold  hid  hands  upturned  on  his  knees." 
As  he  feasted  with  Bishop  Aidan  by  his  side,  the  thegn,  or 
noble  of  his  war-band,  whom  he  had  set  to  give  alms  to  the 
poor  at  his  gate,  told  him  of  a  multitude  that  still  waited 
fasting  without.  The  king  at  once  bade  the  untasted  meat 
before  him  be  carried  to  the  poor  and  his  silver  dish  be 
divided  piecemeal  among  them.  Aidan  seized  the  royal 
hand  and  blessed  it.  "  May  this  hand,"  he  cried,  "never 
grow  old. " 

Prisoned,  however,  as  it  was  by  the  conversion  of  Wessex 
to  the  central  districts  of  England,  heathendom  fought  des- 
perately for  life.  Penda  was  still  its  rallying- 
point ;  but  if  his  long  reign  was  one  continu-  Penda. 
ous  battle  with  the  new  religion,  it  was  in  fact 
rather  a  struggle  against  the  supremacy  of  Northumbria 
than  against  the  supremacy  of  the  Cross.  East  Anglia 
became  at  last  the  field  of  contest  between  the  two  powers. 
In  642  Oswald  marched  to  deliver  it  from  Penda  ;  but  in 
a  battle  called  the  battle  of  the  Maserfeld  he  was  over- 
thrown and  slain.  His  l~ody  was  mutilated  and  his  limbs 
set  on  stakes  by  the  brutal  conqueror  ;  but  legend  told 
that  when  all  else  of  Oswald  had  perished,  the  "  white 
hand  "  that  Aidan  had  blessed  still  remained  white  and  un- 
corrupted.  For  a  few  years  after  his  victory  at  the  Maser- 
feld Penda  stood  supreme  in  Britain.  Wessex  owned  his 
overlordship  as  it  had  owned  that  of  Oswald,  and  its  king 
threw  off  the  Christian  faith  and  married  Penda's  sister. 
Even  Deira  s.eems  to  have  bowed  to  him,  and  Bernicia  alone 
refused  to  yield.  Year  by  year  Penda  carried  his  ravages 
over  the  north  ;  once  he  reached  even  the  royal  city,  the  im- 
pregnable rock-fortress  of  Bamborough.  Despairing  of  suc- 
cess in  an  assault,  he  pulled  down  the  cottages  around,  and 
piling  their  wood  against  its  walls,  fired  the  mass  in  a  fair 
wind  that  drove  the  flames  on  the  town.  "See,  Lord, 
what  ill  Penda  is  doing,"  cried  Aidan  from  his  hermit  cell 
in  the  islet  of  Fame,  as  he  saw  the  smoke  drifting  over  the 
city  ;  and  a  change  of  wind — so  ran  the  legend  of  North- 
umbria's  agony — drove  back  at  the  words  the  flames  on  those 
who  kindled  them.  But  in  spite  of  Penda's  victories,  the 
faith  which  he  had  so  often  struck  down  revived  everywhere 
around  him.  Burnt  and  harried  as  it  was,  Bernicia  still 


32  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

clung  to  the  Cross.  The  East-Saxons  again  became  Chris- 
tian. Penda's  own  son,  whom  he  had  set  over  the  Middle- 
English,  received  baptism  and  teachers  from  Liridisfarne. 
The  missionaries  of  the  new  faith  appeared  fearlessly  among 
the  Mercians  themselves,  and  Penda  gave  no  hindrance. 
Heathen  to  the  last,  he  stood  by  unheeding  if  any  were 
willing  to  hear  ;  hating  and  scorning  with  a  certain  grand 
sincerity  of  nature  "  those  whom  he  saw  not  doing  the  works 
of  the  faith  they- had  received."  But  the  track  of  North- 
umbrian missionaries  along  the  eastern  coast  marked  the 
growth  of  Northumbrian  overlordship,  and  the  old  man 
roused  himself  for  a  last  stroke  at  his  foes.  On  the  death 
of  Oswald  Oswiu  had  been  called  to  fill  his  throne,  and  in 
655  he  met  the  pagan  host  near  the  river  Winwaed.  It  was 
in  vain  that  the  Northumbrians  had  sought  to  avert  Penda's 
attack  by  offers  of  ornaments  and  costly  gifts.  "Since  the 
pagans  will  not  take  our  gifts,"  Oswiu  cried  at  last,  "let  us 
offer  them  to  One  that  will  ; "  and  he  vowed  that  if  success- 
ful he  would  dedicate  his  daughter  to  God  and  endow  twelve 
monasteries  in  his  realm.  Victory  at  last  declared  for  the 
faith  of  Christ.  The  river  over  which  the  Mercians  fled 
was  swollen  with  a  great  rain  ;  it  swept  away  the  fragments 
of  the  heathen  host,  Penda  himself  was  slain,  and  the  cause 
of  the  older  gods  was  lost  for  ever. 

The  terrible  struggle  was  followed  by  a  season  of  peace. 
For  four  years  after  the  battle  of  Winwaed  Mercia  was  sub- 
ject to  Oswiu's  overlordship.  But  in  659  a  gen- 
Oswiu.  eral  rising  of  the  people  threw  off  the  Northum- 
brian yoke.  The  heathendom  of  Meroia  however 
was  dead  with  Penda.  "  Being  thus  freed,"  Breda  tells  us. 
"  the  Mercians  with  their  king  rejoiced  to  serve  the  true  King. 
Christ."  Its  three  provinces,  the  earlier  Mercia,  the  Middle- 
English,  and  the  Lindiswaras,  were  united  in  the  bishopric 
of  Ceadda,  the  St.  Chad  to  whom  the  Mercian  see  of  Lich- 
field  still  looks  as  its  founder.  Ceadda  was  a  monk  of  Lin- 
disfarne,  so  simple  and  lowly  in  temper  that  he  traveled  on 
foot  on  his  long  mission  journeys,  till  Archbishop  Theodore 
in  later  days  with  his  own  hands  lifted  him  on  horseback. 
The  poetry  of  Christian  enthusiasm  breaks  out  in  his  death- 
legend,  as  it  tells  us  how  voices  of  singers  singing  sweetly 
descended  from  Heaven  to  the  little  cell  beside  St.  Mary's 


THE  NORTHUMBRIAN   KINGDOM.      588   TO   685.  33 

church  where  the  bishop  lay  dying.  Then  ''the  same  song 
ascended  from  the  roof  again,  and  returned  heavenward  by 
the  way  that  it  came."  It  was  the  soul  of  his  brother,  the 
missionary  Cedd,  come  with  a  choir  of  angels  to  solace  the 
last  hours  of  Ceadda.  In  Northumbria  the  work  of  his 
fellow  missionaries  has  almost  been  lost  in  the  glory  of 
Cuthbert.  No  story  better  lights  up  for  us  the  new  religious 
life  of  the  time  than  the  story  of  this  apostle  of  the  Low- 
lands. It  carries  us  at  its  outset  into  the  northernmost  part 
of  Northumbria,  the  country  of  the  Teviot  and  the  Tweed. 
Born  on  the  southern  edge  of  the  Lammermoor,  Cuthbert 
found  shelter  at  eight  years  old  in  a  widow's  house  in  the 
little  village  of  Wranghoim.  Already  in  youth  there  was  a 
poetic  sensibility  beneath  the  robust  frame  of  the  boy  which 
caught  even  in  the  chance  word  of  a  game  a  call  to  higher 
things.  Later  on,  a  traveler  coming  in  his  white  mantle 
over  the  hillside  and  stopping  his  horse  to  tend  Cuthbert's 
injured  knee  seemed  to  him  an  angel.  The  boy's  shepherd 
life  carried  him  to  the  bleak  upland,  still  famous  as  a  sheep- 
walk,  though  the  scant  herbage  scarce  veils  the  whinstone 
rock,  and  there  meteors  plunging  into  the  night  became  to 
him  a  company  of  angelic  spirits,  carrying  the  soul  of  Bishop 
Aidan  heavenward.  Slowly  Cuthbert's  longings  settled  into 
a  resolute  will  towards  a  religious  life,  and  he  made  his  way 
at  last  to  a  group  of  log-shanties  in  the  midst  of  an  untilled 
solitude  where  a  few  Irish  monks  from  Lindisfarne  had 
settled  in  the  mission-station  of  Melrose.  To-day  the  land 
is  a  land  of  poetry  and  romance.  Cheviot  and  Lammer- 
moor, Ettrick  and  Teviotdale,  Yarrow  and  Annan-water, 
are  musical  with  old  ballads  and  border  minstrelsy.  Agri- 
culture had  chosen  its  valleys  for  her  favorite  seat,  and 
drainage  and  steam-power  have  turned  sedgy  marshes  into 
farm  and  meadow.  But  to  see  the  Lowlands  as  they  were 
in  Cuthbert's  day  we  must  sweep  meadow  and  farm  away 
again,  and  replace  them  by  vast  solitudes,  dotted  here  and 
there  with  clusters  of  wooden  hovels,  and  crossed  by  boggy 
tracks  over  which  travelers  rode  spear  in  hand  and  eye  kept 
cautiously  about  them.  The  Northumbrian  peasantry 
among  whom  he  journeyed  wore  for  the  most  part  Chris- 
tians only  in  name.  With  Teutonic  indifference  they  had 
yielded  to  their  thegns  in  nominally  accepting  the  new 
3 


34        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Christianity,  as  these  had  yielded  to  the  king.  But  they 
retained  their  old  superstitions  side  by  side  with  the  new 
worship ;  plague  or  mishap  drove  them  back  to  a  reliance 
on  their  heathen  charms  and  amulets ;  and  if  trouble  befell 
the  Christian  preachers  who  came  settling  among  them  they 
took  it  as  proof  of  the  wrath  of  the  older  gods.  When  some 
log-rafts  which  were  floating  down  the  Tyne  for  the  con- 
struction of  an  abbey  at  its  mouth  drifted  with  the  monks 
who  were  at  work  on  them  out  to  sea,  the  rustic  bystanders 
shouted,  "  Let  nobody  pray  for  them ;  let  nobody  pity  these 
men,  who  have  taken  away  from  us  our  old  worship ;  and 
how  their  new-fangled  customs  are  to  be  kept  nobody 
knows."  On  foot,  on  horseback,  Cuthbert  wandered  among 
listeners  such  as  these,  choosing  above  all  the  remoter 
mountain  villages  from  whose  roughness  and  poverty  other 
teachers  turned  aside.  Unlike  his  Irish  comrades,  he  needed 
no  interpreter  as  he  passed  from  village  to  village ;  the 
frugal,  long-headed  Northumbrians  listened  willingly  to  one 
who  was  himself  a  peasant  of  the  Lowlands,  and  who  had 
caught  the  rough  Northumbrian  burr  along  the  banks  of 
the  Tweed.  His  patience,  his  humorous  good  sense,  the 
sweetness  of  his  look,  told  for  him,  and  not  less  the  stout 
vigorous  frame  which  fitted  the  peasant-preacher  for  the 
hard  life  he  had  chosen.  "  Never  did  man  die  of  hunger 
who  served  God  faithfully,"  he  would  say,  when  nightfall 
found  them  supperless  in  the  waste.  "Look  at  the  eagle 
overhead  !  God  can  feed  us  through  him  if  He  will " — and 
once  at  least  he  owed  his  meal  to  a  fish  that  the  scared  bird 
let  fall.  A  snow-storm  drove  his  boat  on  the  coast  of  Fife. 
"The  snow  closes  the  road  along  the  shore,"  mourned  his 
comrades;  "the  storm  bars  our  way  over  sea."  "There 
is  still  the  way  of  Heaven  that  lies  open,"  said  Cuthbert. 

While  missionaries  were  thus  laboring  among  its  peas- 
antry, Northumbria  saw  the  rise  of  a  number  of  monasteries, 

not  bound  in  deed  by  the  strict  ties  of  the  Benedic- 
Csedinon.     tine  rule,  but  gathered  on  the  loose  Celtic  model 

of  the  family  or  the  clan  round  some  noble  and 
wealthy  person  who  sought  devotional  retirement.  The 
most  notable  and  wealthy  of  these  houses  was  that  of 
Streoneshealh,  where  Hild,  a  woman  of  royal  race,  reared 
her  abbey  on  the  summit  of  the  dark  cliffs  of  Whitby,  look- 


THE    NORTHUMr.KIAN    KINGDOM.      588   TO   685.        35 

iug  out  over  the  Northern  Sea.  Her  counsel  was  sought 
even  by  nobles  and  kings  ;  and  the  double  monastery  over 
which  she  ruled  became  a  seminary  of  bishops  and  priests. 
The  sainted  John  of  Beverley  was  among  her  scholars.  But 
the  name  which  really  throws  glory  over  Whitby  is  the  name 
of  a  lay-brother  from  whose  lips  flowed  the  first  great  Eng- 
lish song.  Though  well  advanced  in  years,  Caedmon  had 
learnt  nothing  of  the  art  of  verse,  the  alliterative  jingle  so 
common  among  his  fellows,  "wherefore  being  sometimes  at 
feasts,  when  all  agreed  for  glee's  sake  to  sing  in  turn,  he  no 
sooner  saw  the  harp  come  towards  him  than  he  rose  from 
the  board  and  turned  homewards.  Once  when  he  had  done 
thus,  and  gone  from  the  feast  to  the  stable  where  he  had 
that  night  charge  of  the  cattle,  there  appeared  to  him  in 
his  sleep  One  who  said,  greeting  him  by  name,  'Sing,  Caed- 
mon,  some  song  to  Me.'  'I  cannot  sing,'  he  answered; 
'for  this  cause  left  I  the  feast  and  came  hither.'  He  who 
talked  with  him  answered,  'However  that  be,  you  shall  sing 
t<>  Me.'  'What  shall  I  sing?'  rejoined  Caedmon.  'The 
beginning  of  created  things,'  replied  He.  In  the  morning 
the  cowherd  stood  before  Hild  and  told  his  dream.  Abbess 
and  brethren  alike  concluded  'that  heavenly  grace  had  been 
conferred  on  him  by  the  Lord.'  They  translated  for  Caed- 
mon a  passage  in  Holy  Writ,  '  bidding  him,  if  he  could,  put 
the  same  into  verse.'  The  next  morning  he  gave  it  them 
composed  in  excellent  verse,  whereon  the  abbess,  under- 
standing the  divine  grace  in  the  man,  bade  him  quit  the 
secular  habit  and  take  on  him  the  monastic  life."  Piece  by 
piece  the  sacred  story  was  thus  thrown  into  Caedmon's  poem. 
"  He  sang  of  the  creation  of  the  world,  of  the  origin  of  man, 
and  of  all  the  history  of  Israel ;  of  their  departure  from 
Kirypt  and  entering  into  the  Promised  Land ;  of  the  incar- 
nation, passion,  and  n-surrcction  of  Christ,  and  of  his  ascen- 
sion ;  of  the  terror  of  future  judgment,  the  horror  of  hell- 
pangs,  and  the  joys  of  heaven." 

To  men  of  that  day  this  sudden  burst  of  song  seemed  a 
thing  necessarily  divine.  "  Others  after  him  strove  to  com- 
pose religious  poems,  but  none  could  vie  with  him, 
for  he  learned  the  art  of  poetry  not  from  men  nor 
of  men,  but  from  God."  It  was  not  indeed  that 
diiy  change  had  been  wrought  by  Caedmon  in  the  outer  form 


36  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE.  - 

of  English  song.  The  collection  of  poems  which  is  con- 
nected with  his  name  has  come  down  to  us  in  a  later  West- 
Saxon  version,  and  though  modern  criticism  is  still  in  doubt 
as  to  their  authorship,  they  are  certainly  the  work  of  various 
hands.  The  verse,  whether  of  Caedmon.  or  of  other  singers, 
is  accented  and  alliterative,  without  conscious  art  or  de- 
velopment or  the  delight  that  springs  from  reflection,  a  verse 
swift  and  direct,  but  leaving  behind  it  a  sense  of  strength 
rather  than  of  beauty,  obscured  too  by  harsh  metaphors  and 
involved  construction.  But  it  is  eminently  the  verse  of 
warriors,  the  brief  passionate  expression  of  brief  passionate 
emotions.  Image  after  image,  phrase  after  phrase,  in  these 
early  poems,  start  out  vivid,  harsh  and  emphatic.  The  very 
meter  is  rough  with  a  sort  of  self-violence  and  repression  ; 
the  verses  fall  like  sword-strokes  in  the  thick  of  battle. 
The  love  of  natural  description,  the  background  of  melan- 
choly which  gives  its  pathos  to  English  verse,  the  poet  only 
shared  with  earlier  singers.  But  the  faith  of  Christ  brought 
in,  as  we  have  seen,  new  realms  of  fancy.  The  legends  of 
the  heavenly  light,  Baeda's  story  of  "The  Sparrow,"  show 
the  side  of  English  temperament  to  which  Christianity  ap- 
pealed— its  sense  of  the  vague,  vast  mystery  of  the  world 
and  of  man,  its  dreamy  revolt  against  the  narrow  bounds  of 
experience  and  life.  It  was  this  new  poetic  world  which 
combined  with  the  old  in  the  so-called  epic  of  Caedmon.  In 
its  various  poems  the  vagueness  and  daring  of  the  Teutonic 
imagination  pass  beyond  the  limits  of  the  Hebrew  story  to  a 
"swart  hell  without  light  and  full  of  flame,"  swept  only  at 
dawn  by  the  icy  east  wind,  on  whose  floor  lie  bound  the 
apostate  angels.  The  human  energy  of  the  German  race, 
its  sense  of  the  might  of  individual  manhood,  transformed 
in  English  verse  the  Hebrew  Tempter  into  a  rebel  Satan. 
disdainful  of  vassalage  to  God.  "  I  may  be  a  God  as  He," 
Satan  cries  amidst  his  torments.  "  Evil  it  seems  to  me  to 
cringe  to  Him  for  any  good."  Even  in  this  terrible  outburst 
of  the  fallen  spirit,  we  catch  the  new  pathetic  note  which  the 
Northern  melancholy  was  to  give  to  our  poetry.  "  This  is 
to  me  the  chief  of  sorrow,  that  Adam,  wrought  of  earth, 
should  hold  my  strong  seat — should  dwell  in  joy  while  we  en- 
dure this  torment.  Oh,  that  for  one  winter  hour  I  had  power 
with  my  hands,  then  with  this  host  Avould  I — butaroimd  me 


THE  NORTHUMBRIAN    KINGDOM.      588   TO   685.        37 

lie  the  iron  bonds,  and  this  chain  galls  me."  On  the  other 
hand  the  enthusiasm  for  the  Christian  God,  faith  in  whom 
had  been  bought  so  dearly  by  years  of  desperate  struggle, 
breaks  out  in  long  rolls  of  sonorous  epithets  of  praise  and 
adoration.  The  temper  of  the  poets  brings  them  near  to  the 
earlier  fire  and  passion  of  the  Hebrew,  as  the  events  of  their 
time  brought  them  near  to  the  old  Bible  history  with  its 
fights  and  wanderings.  "  The  wolves  sing  their  dread 
evensong  ;  the  fowls  of  war,  greedy  of  battle,  dewy-feathered, 
scream  around  the  host  of  Pharaoh,"  as  wolf  howled  and 
eagle  screamed  round  the  host  of  Penda.  Everywhere  we 
mark  the  new  grandeur,  depth,  and  fervor  of  tone  which 
the  German  race  was  to  give  to  the  religion  of  the  East. 

But  even  before  Caedmon  had  begun  to  sing,  the  Christian 
Church  of  Xorthumbria  was  torn  in  two  by  a  strife  whose 
issue  was  decided  in  the  same  abbey  of  Whitby 
where  Caedmon  dwelt.  The  labors  of  Aidan,  the  ^^y 
victories  of  Oswald  and  Oswiu,  seemed  to  have 
annexed  England  to  the  Irish  Church.  The  monks  of  Lin- 
disfarne,  or  of  the  new  religious  houses  whose  foundation  fol- 
lowed that  of  Lindisfarne,  looked  for  their  ecclesiastical 
tradition,  not  to  Home  but  to  Ireland  ;  and  quoted  for  their 
guidance  the  instructions,  not  of  Gregory,  but  of  Columba. 
Whatever  claims  of  supremacy  over  the  whole  English  Church 
might  be  pressed  by  the  see  of  Canterbury,  the  real  metropol- 
itan of  the  Church  as  it  existed  in  the  north  of  England  was 
the  Abbot  of  lona.  But  Oswiu's  queen  brought  with  her 
from  Kent  the  loyalty  of  the  Kentish  church  to  the  Roman 
see,  and  a  Roman  party  at  once  formed  about  her.  Her  ef- 
forts were  seconded  by  those  of  two  young  thegns  whose  love 
of  Rome  mounted  to  a  passionate  fanaticism.  The  life  of 
Wilfrid  of  York  was  a  series  of  flights  to  Rome  and  returns 
to  England,  of  wonderful  successes  in  pleading  the  right  of 
Rome  to  the  obedience  of  the  Church  of  Northumbria,  and 
of  as  wonderful  defeats.  Benedict  Biscop  worked  towards 
the  same  end  in  a  quieter  fashion,  coming  backwards  and 
forwards  across  the  sea  with  books  and  relics  and  cunning 
masons  and  painters  to  rear  a  great  church  and  monastery  at 
Wearmouth,  whose  brethren  owned  obedience  to  the  Roman 
See.  In  652  they  first  set  out  for  a  visit  to  the  imperial 
city  ;  and  the  elder,  Benedict  Biscop,  soon  returned  to  preach 


38  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

ceaselessly  against  the  Irish  usages.  He  was  followed  by 
Wilfrid,  whose  energy  soon  brought  the  quarrel  to  a  head. 
The  strife  betwen  the  two  parties  rose  so  high  at  last  that 
Oswiu  was  prevailed  upon  to  summon  in  664  a  great  council 
at  Whitby,  where  the  future  ecclesiastical  allegiance  of 
England  should  be  decided.  The  points  actually  contested 
were  trivial  enough.  Colman,  Aidan's  successor  of  Holy 
Island,  pleaded  for  the  Irish  fashion  of  the  tonsure,  and  for 
the  Irish  time  of  keeping  Easter  ;  Wilfrid  pleaded  for  the 
Eoman.  The  one  disputant  appealed  to  the  authority  of 
Columba,  the  other  to  that  of  St.  Peter.  "  You  own,"  cried 
the  king  at  last  to  Colman,  "  that  Christ  gave  to  Peter  the 
keys  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven — has  He  given  such  power  to 
Columba  ?  "  The  bishop  could  but  answer  "  No."  "  Then 
will  I  rather  obey  the  porter  of  heaven,"  said  Oswiu,  "lest 
when  I  reach  its  gate  he  who  has  the  keys  in  his  keeping 
turn  his  back  on  me,  and  there  be  none  to  open."  The  impor- 
tance of  Oswiu's  judgment  was  never  doubted  at  Lindisfarne, 
where  Colman,  followed  by  the  whole  of  the  Irish-born  breth- 
ren and  thirty  of  their  English  fellows,  forsook  the  see  of  Ai- 
dan  and  sailed  away  to  lona.  Trivial  in  fact  as  were  the  act- 
ual points  of  difference  which  severed  the  Eoman  Church 
from  the  Irish,  the  question  to  which  communion  Northum- 
bria  should  belong  was  of  immense  moment  to  the  after  for- 
tunes of  England.  Had  the  Church  of  Aidan  fina'ly  won,  the 
later  ecclesiastical  history  of  England  would  probably  have  re- 
sembled that  of  Ireland.  Devoid  of  that  power  of  organiza- 
tion which  was  the  strength  of  the  Eoman  Church,  the  Cel- 
tic Church  in  its  own  Irish  home  took  the  clan  system  of  the 
country  as  the  basis  of  Church  government.  Tribal  quarrels 
and  ecclesiastical  controversies  became  inextricably  con- 
founded ;  and  the  clergy,  robbed  of  all  really  spiritual  in- 
fluence, contributed  no  element  save  that  of  disorder  to  the 
state.  Hundreds  of  wanderings  bishops,  a  vast  religious 
authority  wielded  by  hereditary  chieftains,  the  dissociation 
of  piety  from  morality,  the  absence  of  those  larger  and  more 
humanizing  influences  which  contact  with  a  wider  world 
alone  can  give,  this  is  the  picture  which  the  Irish  Church  of 
later  times  presents  to  us.  It  was  from  such  a  chaos  as  this 
that  England  was  saved  by  the  victory  of  Eome  in  the  Synod 
of  Whitby. 


THE   NORTHUMBRIAN   KINGDOM.      588   TO   685.        39 

The  Church  of  England,  as  we  know  it  to-day,  is  the  work, 
so  far  as  its  outer  form  is  concerned,  of  a  Greek  monk, 
Theodore  of  Tarsus,  whom  Rome,  after  her  vic- 
tory at  Whitby,  despatched  in  669  as  Archbishop  Theodore, 
of  Canterbury,  to  secure  England  to  her  sway. 
Theodore's  work  was  determined  in  its~main  outlines  by  the 
previous  history  of  the  English  people.  The  conquest  of 
the  continent  had  been  wrought  either  by  races  such  as  the 
Goths,  who  were  already  Christian,  or  by  heathens  like  the 
Franks,  who  bowed  to  the  Christian  faith  of  the  nations  they 
conquered.  To  this  oneness  of  religion  between  the  German 
invaders  of  the  Empire  and  their  Roman  subjects  was  owing 
the  preservation  of  all  that  survived  of  the  Roman  world. 
The  Church  everywhere  remained  untouched.  The  Christian 
bishop  became  the  defender  of  the  conquered  Italian  or  Gaul 
against  his  Gothic  and  Lombard  conqueror,  the  mediator 
between  the  German  and  his  subjects,  the  one  bulwark 
against  barbaric  violence  and  oppression.  To  the  barbarian 
on  the  other  hand  he  was  the  representative  of  all  that  was 
venerable  in  the  past,  the  living  record  of  law,  of  letters, 
and  of  art.  But  in  Britain  priesthood  and  people  had  been 
exterminated  together.  When  Theodore  came  to  organize 
the  Church  of  England,  the  very  memory  of  the  older  Chris- 
tian Church  which  existed  in  Roman  Britain  had  passed 
away.  The  first  Christian  missionaries,  strangers  in  a  heathen 
land,  attached  themselves  necessarily  to  the  courts  of  the 
kings,  who  were  their  first  converts,  and  whose  conversion 
was  generally  followed  by  that  of  their  people.  The  English 
bishops  were  thus  at  first  royal  chaplains,  and  their  diocese 
was  naturally  nothing  but  the  kingdom.  The  kingdom  of 
Kent  became  the  diocese  of  Canterbury,  and  the  kingdom  of 
Northumbria  the  diocese  of  York.  In  this  way  too  realms 
which  are  all  but  forgotten  are  commemorated  in  the  limits 
of  existing  sees.  That  of  Rochester  represented  till  of  late 
an  obscure  kingdom  of  West  Kent,  and  the  frontier  of  the 
original  kingdom  of  Mercia  might  be  recovered  by  follow- 
ing the  map  of  the  ancient  bishopric  of  Lichfield.  Theodore's 
first  work  was  to  order  the  dioceses  ;  his  second  was  to  add 
many  new  sees  to  the  old  ones,  and  to  group  all  of  them  round 
the  one  center  of  Canterbury.  All  ties  between  England 
;.ii(l  the  Tri^li  Church  were  roughly  broken.  Lindisfarne 


40  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

sank  into  obscurity  with  the  flight  of  Colman  and  his  monks. 
The  new  prelates,  gathered  in  synod  after  synod,  acknowl- 
edged the  authority  of  their  one  primate.  The  organiza- 
tion of  the  episcopate  was  followed  during  the  next  hundred 
years  by  the  development  of  the  parish  system.  The  loose 
system  of  the  mission-station,  the  monastery  from  which 
priest  and  bishop  went  forth  on  journey  after  journey  to 
preach  and  baptize,  as  Aidan  went  forth  from  Lindisfarne  or 
Cuthbert  from  Melrose,  naturally  disappeared  as  the  land 
became  Christian.  The  missionaries  becamed  settled  clergy. 
The  holding  of  the  English  noble  or  landowner  became  the 
parish,  and  his  chaplain  the  parish  priest,  as  the  king's 
chaplain  had  become  the  bishop,  and  the  kingdom  his  diocese. 
A  source  of  permanent  endowment  for  the  clergy  was  found 
at  a  later  time  in  the  revival  of  the  Jewish  system  of  tithes, 
and  in  the  annual  gift  to  Church  purposes  of  a  tenth  of  the 
produce  of  the  soil ;  while  discipline  within  the  Church  itself 
was  provided  for  by  an  elaborate  code  of  sin  and  penance  in 
which  the  principle  of  compensation  which  lay  at  the  root 
of  Teutonic  legislation,  crept  into  the  relations  between  God 
and  the  soul. 

In  his  work  of  organization,  in  his  increase  of  bishoprics,  in 
his  arrangement  of  dioceses,  and  the  way  in  which  he  grouped 

them  round  the  see  of  Canterbury,   in   his    na- 
Wuif h      r  tional  synods  and  ecclesiastical  canons,  Theodore 

was  unconsciously  doing  a  political  work.  The 
old  divisions  of  kingdoms  and  tribes  about  him,  divisions 
which  had  sprung  for  the  most  part  from  mere  accidents 
of  the  conquest,  were  fast  breaking  down.  The  smaller 
states  were  by  this  time  practically  absorbed  by  the  three 
larger  ones,  and  of  these  three  Mercia  and  Wessex  had  for  a 
time  bowed  to  the  overlordship  of  Northumbria.  The  ten- 
dency to  national  unity  which  was  to  characterize  the  new 
England  had  thus  already  declared  itself  ;  but  the  policy  of 
Theodore  clothed  with  a  sacred  form  and  surrounded  with 
divine  sanctions  a  unity  which  as  yet  rested  on  no  basis  but 
the  sword.  The  single  throne  of  the  one  primate  at  Canter- 
bury accustomed  men's  minds  to  the  thought  of  a  single 
throne  for  their  one  temporal  overlord  at  York,  or,  as  in 
later  days,  at  Lichfield  or  at  Winchester.  The  regular  subor- 


THE   NORTHUMBRIAN    KINGDOM.      588   TO   085.        41 

dination  of  priest  to  bishop,  of  bishop  to  primate,  in  the  admin- 
istration of  the  Church,  supplied  the  mold  on  which  the  civil 
organization  of  the  state  quietly  shaped  itself.  Above  all, 
the  councils  gathered  by  Theodore  were  the  first  of  all  na- 
tional gatherings  for  general  legislation.  It  was  at  a  much 
later  time  that  the  Wise  men  of  Wessex,  or  Northumbria,  or 
Mercia,  learned  to  come  together  in  the  Witenagemot  of  all 
England.  It  was  the  ecclesiastical  synods  which  by  their 
example  led  the  way  to  our  national  parliament,  as  it  was 
the  canons  enacted  in  such  synods  which  led  the  way  to  a 
national  system  of  law.  But  if  the  movement  towards  na- 
tional unity  was  furthered  by  the  centralizing  tendencies  of 
the  Church,  it  was  as  yet  hindered  by  the  upgrowth  of  a 
great  rival  power  to  contest  the  supremacy  with  Northurn- 
bria.  Mercia,  as  we  have  seen,  had  recovered  from  the  abso- 
lute subjection  in  which  it  was  left  after  Penda's  fall  by 
slinking  off  the  supremacy  of  Oswiu,  and  by  choosing  Wulf- 
here  for  its  king.  Wulfhere  was  a  vigorous  and  active  ruler, 
and  the  peaceful  reign  of  Oswiu  left  him  free  to  build  up 
again  during  the  sixteen  years  of  his  rule  the  power  which 
had  been  lost  at  Penda's  death.  Penda's  realm  in  Central 
Britain  was  quickly  restored,  and  Wulfhere's  dominion  ex- 
tended even  over  the  Severn  and  embraced  the  lower  valley 
of  the  Wye.  He  had  even  more  than  his  father's  success. 
After  a  great  victory  in  661  over  the  West-Saxons,  his  rav- 
ages were  carried  into  the  heart  of  Wessex,  and  the  valley 
of  the  Thames  opened  to  his  army.  To  the  eastward,  the 
East-Saxons  and  London  came  to  own  his  supremacy  ;  while 
southward  he  pushed  across  the  river  over  Surrey.  In  the 
sumo  year,  6(51,  Sussex,  perhaps  in  dread  of  the  West-Saxons, 
found  protection  in  accepting  Wulfhere's  overlordship,  and 
its  king  was  rewarded  by  a  gift  of  two  outlying  settlements, 
of  the  Jutes,  the  Isle  of  Wight  and  the  lands  of  the  Meon- 
wara  along  the  Southampton  Water,  which  we  may  suppose 
had  been  reduced  by  Mercian  arms.  The  Mercian  su- 
premacy which  thus  reached  from  the  Humber  to  the  Chan- 
nel and  stretched  westward  to  the  Wye  was  the  main  polit- 
ical fact  in  Britain  when  Theodore  landed  on  its  shores.  In 
fact,  with  the  death  of  Oswiu  in  670  all  effort  was  finally 
abandoned  by  Northumbria  to  crush  the  rival  states  in  Central 
or  Southern  Britain. 


42  HISTORY  OK   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

The  industrial  progress  of  the  Mercian  kingdom  went 
hand  in  hand  with  its  military  advance.  The  forests  of  its 
western  border,  the  marshes  of  its  eastern  coast, 
0  were  bein£  cleared  and  drained  by  monastic  col- 
onies, whose  success  shows  the  hold  which  Chris- 
tianity had  now  gained  over  its  people.  Heathenism  indeed 
still  held  its  own  in  the  western  woodlands ;  we  mav  per- 
haps see  Woden-worshiping  miners  at  Alcester  in  the  de- 
mons of  the  legend  of  Bishop  Ecgwine  of  Worcester,  who 
drowned  the  preacher's  voice  with  the  din  of  their  hammers. 
But  in  spite  of  their  hammers  Ecgwine's  preaching  left  one 
lasting  mark  behind  it.  The  bishop  heard  how  a  swineherd, 
coming  out  from  the  forest  depths  on  a  sunny  glade,  sa'w 
forms  which  were  possibly  those  of  the  Three  Fair  Women 
of  the  old  German  mythology,  seated  round  a  mystic  bush, 
and  singing  their  unearthly  song.  In  his  fancy  the  fair 
women  transformed  themselves  into  a  vision  of  the  Mother 
of  Christ ;  and  the  silent  glade  soon  became  the  site  of  an 
abbey  dedicated  to  her,  and  of  a  town  which  sprang  up 
under  its  shelter — the  Evesham  which  was  to  be  hallowed 
in  after  time  by  the  fall  of  Earl  Simon  of  Leicester.  Wilder 
even  than  the  western  woodland  was  the  desolate  fen-country 
on  the  eastern  border  of  the  kingdom,  stretching  from  the 
"  Holland,"  the  sunk,  hollow  land  of  Lincolnshire,  to  the 
channel  of  the  Ouse,  a  wilderness  of  shallow  waters  and 
reedy  islets  wrapped  in  its  own  dark  mist- veil  and  tenanted 
only  by  flocks  of  screaming  wild-fowl.  Here  through  the 
liberality  of  King  Wulfhere  rose  the  abbey  of  Medesham- 
stead,  our  later  Peterborough.  On  its  northern  border  a 
hermit,  Botulf,  founded  a  little  house  which  as  ages  went 
by  became  our  Botulf 's  town  or  Boston.  The  abbey  of  Ely 
was  founded  in  the  same  wild  fen-country  by  the  Lady 
JEthelthryth,  the  wife  of  King  Ecgfrith,  who  in  the  year 
670  succeeded  Oswiu  on  the  throne  of  Xorthumbria.  Here, 
too,  Guthlac,  a  youth  of  the  royal  race  of  Mercia,  sought  a 
refuge  from  the  world  in  the  solitude  of  Crowland,  and  so 
great  was  the  reverence  he  won,  that  only  two  years  had 
passed  since  his  death  when  the  stately  abbey  of  Crowland 
rose  over  his  tomb.  Earth  was  brought  in  boats  to  form  a 
site ;  the  buildings  rested  on  oaken  piles  driven  into  the 
marsh,  a  stone  church  replaced  the  hermit's  cell,  and  the 


THE    NORTHUMBRIAN   KINGDOM.      588   TO    685.        43 

toil  of  the  new  brotherhood  changed  the  pools  around  them 
into  fertile  meadow-land. 

But  while  Mercia  was  building  up  its  dominion  in  Mid- 
Britain,  Xorthumbria  was  far  from  having  sunk  from  its  old 
renown  either  in  government  or  war.  Ecgfrith  r^  FaU  o{ 
had  succeeded  his  father  Oswiu  in  670,  and  made  North- 
no  effort  to  reverse  his  policy,  or  attempt  to  umbria. 
build  up  again  a  supremacy  over  the  states  of  southern  Bri- 
tain. His  ambition  turned  rather  to  conquests  over  the 
Briton  than  to  victories  over  his  fellow  Englishmen.  The 
war  bi't  \vci-n  Briton  and  Englishman,  which  had  languished 
since  the  battle  of  Chester,  had  been  revived  some  twenty 
years  before  by  an  advance  of  the  West-Saxons  to  the  south- 
west. Unable  to  save  the  possessions  of  Wessex  'in  the  Sev- 
ern valley  and  on  the  Cots  wolds  from  the  grasp  of  Penda, 
the  West-Saxon  king,  Cenwealh,  seized  the  moment  when 
Mercia  was  absorbed  in  the  last  struggle  of  Penda  against 
Northumbria  to  seek  for  compensation  in  an  attack  on  his 
Welsh  neighbors.  A  victory  at  Bradford  on  the  Avon  en- 
abled him  to  overrun  the  country  north  of  Mendip  which 
had  till  then  been  held  by  the  Britons  ;  and  a  second  cam- 
paign in  658,  which  ended  in  a  victory  on  the  skirts  of  the 
great  forest  that  covered  Somerset  to  the  east,  settled  the 
West-Saxons  as  conquerors  round  the  sources  of  the  Parret. 
It  may  have  been  the  example  of  the  West-Saxons  which 
spurred  Ecgfrith  to  enlarge  the  bounds  of  his  kingdom  by  a 
series  of  attacks  upon  his  British  neighbors  in  the  west. 
His  armies  chased  the  Britons  from  southern  Cumbria  and 
made  the  districts  of  Carlisle,  the  Lake  country,  and  our 
Lancashire  English  ground.  His  success  in  this  quarter 
was  quickly  followed  by  fresh  gain  in  the  north,  where  he 
pushed  his  conquests  over  the  Scots  beyond  Clydesdale,  and 
subdued  the  Picts  over  the  Firth  of  Forth,  so  that  their  ter- 
ritory on  the  northern  bank  of  the  Forth  was  from  this  time 
reckoned  as  Northumbrian  ground.  The  monastery  of 
Abercorn  on  the  shore  of  the  Firth  of  Forth,  in  which  a  few 
years  later  a  Northumbrian  bishop,  Trumwine,  fixed  the  seat 
of  a  new  bishopric,  was  a  sign  of  the  subjection  of  the  Picts 
to  the  Northumbrian  overlordship.  Even  when  recalled 
from  the  wars  to  his  southern  border  by  an  attack  of  Wulf- 
here's  in  675,  the  vigorous  and  warlike  Ecgfrith  provrd  n 


44        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

different  foe  from  the  West-Saxon  or  the  Jute,  and  the  de- 
feat of  the  king  of  Mercia  was  so  complete  that  he  was  glad 
to  purchase  peace  by  giving  up  to  his  conqueror  the  province 
of  the  Lindiswaras  or  Lincolnshire.  A  large  part  of  the 
conquered  country,  of  the  Lake  district  was  bestowed  upon 
the  see  of  Lindisfarne,  which  was  at  this  time  filled  by  one 
whom  we  have  seen  before  laboring  as  the  Apostle  of  the 
Lowlands.  After  years  of  mission  labor  at  Melrose,  Cuth- 
bert  had  quitted  it  for  Holy  Island,  and  preached  among  the 
moors  of  Northumberland  as  he  had  preached  beside  the 
banks  of  the  Tweed.  He  remained  there  through  the  great 
secession  which  followed  on  the  Synod  of  Whitby,  and  be- 
came prior  of  the  dwindled  company  of  brethren,  now  torn 
with  endless  disputes,  against  which  his  patience  and  good 
humor  struggled  in  vain.  Worn  out  at  last  he  fled  to  a 
little  island  of  basaltic  rock,  one  of  a  group  not  far  from 
Ida's  fortress  of  Bamborough,  strewn  for  the  most  part  with 
kelp  and  seaweed,  the  home  of  the  gull  and  the  seal.  In 
the  midst  of  it  rose  his  hut  of  rough  stones  and  turf,  dug 
deep  into  the  rock  and  roofed  with  logs  and  straw. 

The  reverence  for  his  sanctity  dragged  Cuthbert  back  in 
old  age  to  fill  the  vacant  see  of  Lindisfarne.  He  entered 
Carlisle,  which  the  king  had  bestowed  upon  the  bishopric,  at 
a  moment  when  all  Northumbria  was  waiting  for  news  of  a 
fresh  campaign  of  Ecgfrith's  against  the  Britons  in  the 
north.  The  power  of  Northumbria  was  already  however 
fatally  shaken.  In  the  south,  Mercia  had  in  679  renewed 
the  attempt  which  had  been  checked  by  Wulfhere's  defeat. 
His  successor,  the  Mercian  king  ^Ethelred,  again  seized  the 
province  of  the  Lindiswaras,  and  the  war  he  thus  began  with 
Northumbria  was  only  ended  by  a  peace  negotiated  through 
Archbishop  Theodore,  which  left  him  master  of  Middle 
England.  Old  troubles  too  revived  on  Ecgfrith's  northern 
frontier,  where  a  rising  of  the  Picts  forced  him  once  more 
to  cross  the  Firth  of  Forth,  and  march  in  the  year  685  into 
their  land.  A  sense  of  coming  ill  weighed  on  Northumbria, 
and  its  dread  was  quickened  by  a  memory  of  the  curses  which 
had  been  pronounced  by  the  bishops  of  Ireland  on  the  king, 
when  his  navy,  setting  out  a  year  before  from  the  newly- 
conquered  western  coast,  swept  the  Irish  shores  in  a  raid 
which  seemed  like  sacrilege  to  those  who  loved  the  home  of 


THE  NORTHUMBRIAN   KINGDOM.      588  TO   685.        45 

Aidan  and  Columba.  As  Cuthbert  bent  over  a  Roman  foun- 
tain which  still  stood  unharmed  amongst  the  ruins  of  Carlisle, 
the  anxious  bystanders  thought  they  caught  words  of  ill-omen 
falling  from  the  old  man's  lips.  "  Perhaps,"  he  seemed  to 
murmur,  "  at  this  very  hour  the  peril  of  the  fight  is  over  and 
done/'  "  Watch  and  pray,"  he  said,  when  they  questioned 
him  on  the  morrow;  "watch  and  pray."  In  a  few  days 
more  a  solitary  fugitive  escaped  from  the  slaughter  told  that 
the  Picts  had  turned  desperately  to  bay  as  the  English  army 
entered  Fife  ;  and  that  Ecgfrith  and  the  flower  of  his  nobles 
lay,  a  ghastly  ring  of  corpses,  on  the  far-off  moorland  of 
Nectansmere. 

To  Cuthbert  the  tidings  were  tidings  of  death.  His  bishop- 
ric was  soon  laid  aside,  and  two  months  after  his  return  to 
his  island-hermitage  the  old  man  lay  dying,  mur- 
muring to  the  last  words  of  concord  and  peace, 
A  signal  of  his  death  had  been  agreed  upon,  and 
one  of  those  who  stood  by  ran  with  a  candle  in  each  hand  to 
a  place  whence  the  light  might  be  seen  by  a  monk  who  was 
looking  out  from  the  watch-tower  of  Lindisfarne.  As  the 
tiny  gleam  flashed  over  the  dark  reach  of  sea,  and  the  watch- 
man hurried  with  his  news  into  the  church,  the  brethren  of 
Holy  Island  were  singing,  as  it  chanced,  the  words  of  the 
Psalmist :  "  Thou  hast  cast  us  out  and  scattered  us  abroad  ; 
Thou  hast  also  been  displeased  ;  Thou  hast  shown  thy  people 
heavy  things  ;  Thou  hast  given  us  a  drink  of  deadly  wine." 
The  chant  was  the  dirge,  not  of  Cuthbert  only,  but  of  his 
Church  and  his  people.  Over  both  hung  the  gloom  of  a 
seeming  failure.  Strangers  who  knew  not  lonaand  Columba 
entered  into  the  heritage  of  Aidan  and  Cuthbert.  As  the 
Roman  communion  folded  England  again  beneath  her  wing, 
men  forgot  that  a  Church  which  passed  utterly  away  had 
battled  with  Rome  for  the  spiritual  headship  of  Western 
Christendom,  and  that  throughout  the  great  struggle  with 
the  heathen  reaction  of  Mid-Britain  the  new  religion  had  its 
center  not  at  Canterbury,  but  at  Liudisfarue.  Nor  were  men 
long  to  remember  that  from  the  days  of  ^thelfrith  to  the 
days  of  Ecgfrith  English  politics  had  found  their  center  at 
York.  But  forgotten  or  no,  Northumbria  had  done  its  work. 
By  its  missionaries  and  by  its  sword  it  had  won  England 
from  heathendom  to  the  Christian  Church.  It  had  given  her 


46  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

a  new  poetic  literature.  Its  monasteries  were  already  the 
seat  of  whatever  intellectual  life  the  country  possessed. 
Above  all  it  had  first  gathered  together  into  a  loose  political 
unity  the  various  tribes  of  the  English  people,  and  by  stand- 
ing at  their  head  for  half  a  century  had  accustomed  them  to 
a  national  life,  out  of  which  England,  as  we  have  it  now,  was 
to  spring. 


Section  IV.— The  Three  Kingdoms,  685—828. 

[Authorities.— A  few  incidents  of  Mercian  history  are  preserved  among  the 
meager  annals  of  Wessex,  which  form,  during  this  period,  "  The  English 
Chronicle."  But  for  the  most  part  we  are  thrown  upon  later  writers,  especially 
Henry  of  Huntingdon  and  William  of  Malmesbury,  both  authors  of  the  twelfth 
century,  but  having  access  to  older  materials  now  lost.  The  letters  of  Boniface 
and  those  of  Alcuin,  which  form  the  most  valuable  contemporary  materials  for 
this  period,  are  given  by  Dr.  Giles  in  his  "  Patres  Ecclesise  Anglicanse."  They  have 
also  been  carefully  edited  by  Jaffe  in  his  series  of  "  Monuments  Germanica."] 

The  supremacy  of  Northumbria  over  the  English  people 

had  fallen    forever  with  the  death  of  Oswiu,  and  its  power 

over   the   tribes  of   the  north  was  as  completely 

Wessex  broken  by  the  death  of  Ecgfrith  and  the  defeat 
of  Nectansmere.  To  the  north,  the  flight  of 
Bishop  Trumwine  from  Abercorn  announced  the  revolt  of  the 
Picts  from  her  rule.  In  the  south,  Mercia  proved  a  formid- 
able rival  under  JSthelred,  who  had  succeeded  Wulfhere  in 
675.  Already  his  kingdom  reached  from  the  Humber  to  the 
Channel ;  and  ^Ethelred  in  the  first  years  of  his  reign  had 
finally  reduced  Kent  beneath  his  overlordship.  All  hope  of 
national  union  seemed  indeed  at  an  end,  for  the  revival  of 
the  West-Saxon  power  at  this  moment  completed  the  parting 
of  the  land  into  three  states  of  nearly  equal  power  out  of 
which  it  seemed  impossible  that  unity  could  come.  Since 
their  overthrow  at  Faddiley,  a  hundred  years  before,  the  West- 
Saxons  had  been  weakened  by  anarchy  and  civil  war,  and  had 
been  at  the  mercy  alike  of  the  rival  English  states  and  of  the 
Britons.  We  have  seen  however  that  in  652  a  revival  of  power 
had  enabled  them  to  drive  back  the  Britons  to  the  Parret.  A 
second  interval  of  order  in  682  strengthened  King  Centwine 
again  to  take  up  war  with  the  Britons,  and  push  his  frontier  as 
far  as  the  Quantocks.  A  third  rally  of  the  West-Saxons  in  685 
under  Ceadwalla  enabled  them  to  turn  on  their  English 


THE    THREE   KINGDOMS.      685   TO    828.  47 

enemies  and  conquer  Sussex.  Ine,  the  greatest  of  their  early 
kings,  whose  reign  covered  the  long  period  from  688  to 
726,  carried  on  during  the  whole  of  it  the  war  for  suprem- 
acy. Eastward,  he  forced  Kent,  Essex  and  London  to  own 
his  rule.  On  the  west,  he  pushed  his  way  southward  round 
the  marshes  of  the  Parret  to  a  more  fertile  territory,  and 
guarded  the  frontier  of  his  new  conquests  by  a  fortress  on  the 
banks  of  the  Tone,  which  has  grown  into  the  present  Taun- 
ton.  The  West-Saxons  thus  became  masters  of  the  whole 
district  which  now  bears  the  name  of  Somerset,  the  land  of 
the  Somersaetas,  where  the  Tor  rose  like  an  island  out  of  a 
waste  of  flood-drowned  feu  that  stretched  westward  to  the 
Channel.  At  the  base  of  this  hill  Ine  established  on  the  site 
of  an  older  British  foundation  his  famous  monastery  of  Glas- 
tonbury.  The  little  hamlet  in  which  it  stood  took  its  English 
name  from  one  of  the  English  families*  the  Glaestings,  who 
chose  the  spot  for  their  settlement ;  but  it  had  long  been  a 
religious  shrine  of  the  Britons,  and  the  tradition  that  a 
second  Patrick  rested  there  drew  thither  the  wandering 
scholars  of  Ireland.  The  first  inhabitants  of  Ine's  abbey 
tound,  as  they  alleged,  "  an  ancient  church,  built  by  no  art 
o*  man  ; "  and  beside  this  relic  of  its  older  Welsh  owners, 
Ine  founded  his  own  abbey-church  of  stone.  The  spiritual 
charge  of  his  conquests  he  committed  to  his  kingsman 
Ealdhelm,  the  most  famous  scholar  of  his  day,  who  became 
the  first  bishop  of  the  new  see  of  Sherborne,  which  the  king 
formed  out  of  the  districts  west  of  Selwood  and  the  Frome, 
to  meet  the  needs  of  the  new  parts  of  his  kingdom.  Ine's 
code,  the  earliest  collection  of  West-Saxon  laws  which  remains 
to  us,  shows  a  wise  solicitude  to  provide  for  the  civil  as  well 
as  the  ecclesiastical  needs  of  the  mixed  population  over  which 
he  now  ruled.  His  repulse  of  the  Mercians,  when  they  at 
last  attacked  Wessex,  proved  how  well  he  could  provide  for 
its  defense.  ^Ethelred's  reign  of  thirty  years  was  one  of 
almost  unbroken  peace,  and  his  activity  mainly  showed  itself 
in  the  planting  and  endowment  of  monasteries,  which 
gradually  changed  the  face  of  the  realm.  Ceolred  however, 
who  in  709  became  king  of  Mercia,  took  up  the  strife  with 
Wessex  for  the  overlordship  of  the  south,  and  in  715  he 
marched  into  the  very  heart  of  Wessex ;  but  he  was  repulsed 
in  a  bloody  encounter  at  Wranborough.  Able  however  as  Ine 


48  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

was  to  hold  Mercia  at  bay,  he  was  unable  to  hush  the  civil 
strife  that  was  the  curse  of  Wessex,  and  a  wild  legend  tells 
the  story  of  the  disgust  which  drove  him  from  the  world. 
He  had  feasted  royally  at  one  of  his  country  houses,  and  on 
the  morrow,  as  he  rode  from  it,  his  queen  bade  him  turn 
back  thither.  The  king  returned  to  find  his  house  stripped 
of  curtains  and  vessels,  and  foul  with  refuse  and  the  dung  of 
cattle,  while  in  the  royal  bed  where  he  had  slept  with 
^Ethelburh  rested  a  sow  with  her  farrow  of  pigs.  The  scene 
had  no  need  for  the  queen's  comment  :  "  See,  my  lord,  how 
the  fashion  of  this  world  passeth  away  !  "  In  726  Ine  laid 
down  his  erown,  and  sought  peace  and  death  in  a  pilgrimage 
to  Rome. 

The  anarchy  that  had  driven  Ine  from  the  throne  broke 
out  on  his  departure  in  civil  strife  which  left  Wessex  an  easy 
prey  to  the  successor  of  Ceolred.  Among  those 
who  sought  Guthlao's  retirement  at  Crowland 
came  ^Ethelbald,  a  son  of  Penda's  brother,  flying 
from  Ceolred's  hate.  Driven  off  again  and  again  by  the 
king's  pursuit,  JEthelbald  still  returned  to  the  little  hut  he 
had  built  beside  the  hermitage,  and  comforted  himself  in 
hours  of  despair  with  his  companion's  words.  "  Know  how 
to  wait,"  said  Guthlac,  "  and  the  kingdom  will  come  to 
thee  ;  not  by  violence  or  rapine,  but  by  the  hand  of  God." 
In  716  Ceolred  fell  frenzy-smitten  at  his  board,  and  Mercia 
chose  ^Ethelbald  for  its  king.  For  the  first  ten  years  of  his 
reign  he  shrank  from  a  conflict  with  the  victor  of  Wanbor- 
ough  ;  but  with  Ine's  withdrawal  he  took  up  again  the  fierce 
struggle  with  Wessex  for  the  complete  supremacy  of  the 
south.  He  penetrated  into  the  very  heart  of  the  West-Saxon 
kingdom,  and  his  siege  and  capture  of  the  royal  town  of 
Somerton  in  733  ended  the  war.  For  twenty  years  the  over- 
lordship  of  Mercia  was  recognized  by  all  Britain  south  of  the 
Hutnber.  It  was  at  the  head  of  the  forces,  not  of  Mercia 
only,  but  of  East  Anglia  and  Kent,  as  well  as  of  the  West- 
Saxons,  that  ^Ethelbald  marched  against  the  Welsh  ;  and  he 
styled  himself  "King  not  of  the  Mercians  only,  but  of  all 
the  neighboring  peoples  who  are  called  by  the  common 
name  of  Southern  English."  But  the  aim  of  .ZEthelbald  was 
destined  to  the  same  failure  as  that  of  his  predecessors. 
For  twenty  years  indeed  he  met  the  constant  outbreaks  of 


THE  THREE   KINGDOMS.      68£   TO   828.  49 

his  new  subjects  with  success  ;  and  it  was  not  till  754  that  a 
general  rising  forced  him  to  call  his  whole  strength  to  the 
field.  At  the  head  of  his  own  Mercians  and  of  the  subject 
hosts  of  Kent,  Essex  and  East  Anglia,  ^Ethelbald  marched 
to  the  field  of  Burford,  where  the  West-Saxons  were  again 
marshaled  under  the  golden  dragon  of  their  race :  but  after 
hours  of  desperate  fighting  in  the  forefront  of  the  battle,  a 
sudden  panic  seized  the  Mercian  king,  and  the  supremacy  of 
Mid-Britain  passed  away  forever  as  he  fled  first  of  his  army 
from  the  field.  Three  years  later  he  was  surprised  and  slain 
in  a  night  attack  by  his  ealdormen  ;  and  in  the  anarchy 
that  followed,  Kent,  Essex,  and  East  Anglia  threw  off  the 
yoke  of  Mercia. 

While  the  two  southern  kingdoms  were  wasting  their 
energies  in  this  desperate  struggle,  Northumbria  had  set  aside 
its  efforts  at  conquest  for  the  pursuits  of  peace. 
Under  the  reigns  of  Ecgfrith's  successors,  Aldfrith  Baeda. 
the  Learned  and  the  four  kings  who  followed  him, 
the  kingdom  became  in  the  middle  of  the  eighth  century 
the  literary  center  of  Western  Europe.  No  schools  were  more 
famous  than  those  of  Jarrow  and  York.  The  whole  learning  of 
the  age  seemed  to  be  summed  up  in  a  Northumbrian  scholar. 
Baeda — the  Venerable  Bede,  as  later  times  styled  him — was 
born  in  673,  nine  years  after  the  Synod  of  Whitby,  on  ground 
which  passed  a  year  later  to  Benedict  Biscop  as  the  site  of 
the  great  abbey  which  he  reared  by  the  mouth  of  the  Wear. 
His  youth  was  trained  and  his  long  tranquil  life  was  wholly 
spent  in  an  off-shoot  of  Benedict's  house  Avhich  was  founded 
by  his  friend  Ceolfrid.  Bseda  never  stirred  from  Jarrow. 
"  I  have  spent  my  whole  life  in  the  same  monastery,"  he 
says,  "  and  while  attentive  to  the  rule  of  my  order  and  the 
service  of  the  Church  my  constant  pleasure  lay  in  learning, 
or  teaching,  or  writing."  The  words  sketch  for  us  a  scholar's 
life,  the  more  touching  in  its  simplicity  that  it  is  the  life, of 
the  first  great  English  scholar.  The  quiet  grandeur  of  a  life 
consecrated  to  knowledge,  the  tranquil  pleasure  that  lies  in 
learning  and  teaching  and  writing,  dawned  for  Englishmen 
in  the  story  of  Breda.  While  still  young,  he  became  teacher : 
and  six  hundred  monks,  besides  strangers  that  flocked 
thither  for  instruction,  formed  his  school  of  Jarrow.  It  is 
hard  to  imagine  how  among  the  toils  of  the  schoolmaster  and 
4 


50  HISTORY   OP   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  duties  of  the  monk  Bseda  could  have  found  time  for  the 
composition  of  the  numerous  works  that  made  his  name 
famous  in  the  west.  But  materials  for  study  had  accumu- 
lated in  Northumbria  through  the  journeys  of  Wilfrid  and 
Benedict  Biscop  and  the  libraries  which  were  forming  at 
Wearmouth  and  York.  The  tradition  of  the  older  Irish 
teachers  still  lingered  to  direct  the  young  scholar  into  that 
•path  of  Scriptural  interpretation  to  which  he  chiefly  owed 
his  fame.  Greek,  a  rare  accomplishment  in  the  west,  came 
to  him  from  the  school  which  the  Greek  Archbishop  Theo- 
dore founded  beneath  the  walls  of  Canterbury.  His  skill  in 
the  ecclesiastical  chant  was  derived  from  a  Eoman  cantor 
whom  Pope  Vitalian  sent  in  the  train  of  Benedict  Biscop. 
Little  by  little  the  young  scholar  thus  made  himself  master 
of  the  whole  range  of  the  science  of  his  time  ;  he  became,  as 
Burke  rightly  styled  him,  "  the  father  of  English  learning." 
The  tradition  of  the  older  classic  culture  was  first  revived 
for  England  in  his  quotations  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  of 
Seneca  and  Cicero,  of  Lucretius  and  Ovid.  Virgil  cast  over 
him  the  same  spell  that  he  cast  over  Dante  ;  verses  from  the 
^Eneid  break  his  narratives  of  martyrdoms,  and  the  disciple 
ventures  on  the  track  of  the  great  master  in  a  little  eclogue 
descriptive  of  the  approach  of  spring.  His  work  was  done 
with  small  aid  from  others.  "  I  am  my  own  secretary/'  he 
writes  ;  "  I  make  my  own  notes.  I  am  my  own  librarian/' 
But  forty-five  works  remained  after  his  death  to  attest  his 
prodigious  industry.  In  his  own  eyes  and  those  of  his  con- 
temporaries the  most  important  among  these  were  the  com- 
mentaries and  homilies  upon  various  books  of  the  Bible 
which  he  had  drawn  from  the  writings  of  the  Fathers.  But 
he  was  far  from  confining  himself  to  theology.  In  treatises 
compiled  as  text-books  for  his  scholars  Baeda  threw  together 
all  that  the  world  had  then  accumulated  in  astronomy  and 
meteorology,  in  physics  and  music,  in  philosophy,  grammar, 
rhetoric,  arithmetic,  medicine.  But  the  encyclopaedic  char- 
acter of  his  researches  left  him  in  heart  a  simple  English- 
man. He  loved  his  own  English  tongue  ;  he  was  skilled  in 
English  song ;  his  last  work  was  a  translation  into  English 
of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  and  almost  the  last  words  that 
broke  from  his  lips  were  some  English  rimes  upon  death. 
But  the  noblest  proof  of  his  love  of  England  lies  in  the 


THE  THREE   KINGDOMS.      C85   TO   8*28.  51 

work  which  immortalizes  his  name.  In  his  "  Ecclesiastical 
History  of  the  English  Nation  "  Baeda  became  the 
first  English  historian.  All  that  we  really  know 
of  the  century  and  a  half  that  follows  the  landing 
of  Augustine  we  know  from  him.  Wherever  his  own  personal 
observation  extended  the  story  is  told  with  admirable  detail 
and  force.  He  is  hardly  less  full  or  accurate  in  the  portions 
which  he  owed  to  his  Kentish  friends,  Albinus  and  Nothelm. 
What  he  owed  to  no  informant  was  his  own  exquisite  fac- 
ulty of  story-telling,  and  yet  no  story  of  his  own  telling  is 
so  touching  as  the  story  of  his  death.  Two  weeks  before 
the  Easter  of  735  the  old  man  was  seized  with  an  extreme 
weakness  and  loss  of  breath.  He  still  preserved,  however,  his 
usual  pleasantness  and  good  humor,  and  in  spite  of  prolonged 
sleeplessness  continued  his  lectures  to  the  pupils  about  him. 
Verses  of  his  own  English  tongue  bcoke  from  time  to  time 
from  the  master's  lips — rude  rimes  that  told  how  before  the 
"need-fare/'  Death's  stern  "  must-go,"  none  can  enough  be- 
think him  what  is  to  be  his  doom  for  good  or  ill.  The  tears 
of  Baeda's  scholars  mingled  with  his  song.  "  We  never  read 
without  weeping,"  writes  one  of  them.  So  the  days  rolled  on 
to  Ascension-tide,  and  still  master  and  pupils  toiled  at  their 
work,  for  Baeda  longed  to  bring  to  an  end  his  version  of  St. 
John's  Gospel  into  the  English  tongue,  and  his  extracts  from 
Bishop  Isidore.  "  I  don't  want  my  boys  to  read  a  lie,"  he  an- 
swered those  who  would  have  had  him  rest,  "  or  to  work  to 
no  purpose  after  I  am  gone."  A  few  days  before  Ascension- 
tide his  sickness  grew  upon  him,  but  he  spent  the  whole  day 
in  teaching,  only  saying  cheerfully  to  his  scholars,  "Learn 
with  what  speed  you  may  ;  I  know  not  how  long  I  may  last." 
The  dawn  broke  on  another  sleepless  night,  and  again  the 
old  man  called  his  scholars  round  him  and  bade  them  write. 
"There  is  still  a  chapter  wanting,"  said  the  scribe,  as  the 
morning  drew  on,  "and  it  is  hard  for  thee  to  question  thy- 
self any  longer."  "It  is  easily  done,"  said  Baeda;  "take 
thy  pen  and  write  quickly."  Amid  tears  and  farewells  the 
day  wore  away  to  eventide.  "  There  is  yet  one  sentence  un- 
written, dear  master,"  said  the  boy.  "Write  it  quickly," 
bade  the  dying  man.  "  It  is  finished  now,"  said  the  little 
scribe  at  last.  "You  speak  truth.''  said  the  master,  "all  is 
finished  now."  Placed  upon  the  pavement,  his  head  sup- 


52  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

ported  in  his  scholars'  arms,  his  face  turned  to  the  spot 
where  he  was  wont  to  pray,  Baeda  chanted  the  solemn 
"  Glory  to  God."  As  his  voice  reached  the  close  of  his  song 
he  passed  quietly  away. 

First  among  English  scholars,  first  among  English  theo- 
logians, first  among  English  historians,  it  is  in  the  monk  of 
Anarchy  of  Jarrow  that  English  literature  strikes  its  roots. 

North-      111  the  six  hundred  scholars  who  gathered  round 

nmbria.  him  f  or  instruction  he  is  the  father  of  our  national 
education.  In  his  physical  treatises  he  is  the  first  figure  to 
which  our  science  looks  back.  Bgeda  was  a  statesman  as  well 
as  a  scholar,  and  the  letter  which  in  the  last  year  of  his  life 
he  addressed  to  Ecgberht  of  York  shows  how  vigorously  he 
proposed  to  battle  against  the  growing  anarchy  of  JSTorthum- 
bria.  But  his  plans  of  reform  came  too  late,  though  a  king 
like  Eadberht,  with  his  brother  Ecgberht,  the  first  Archbishop 
of  York,  might  for  a  time  revive  the  fading  glories  of  his 
kingdom.  Eadberht  repelled  an  attack  of  ^Ethelbald  on  his 
southern  border  ;  while  at  the  same  time  he  carried  on  a  suc- 
cessful war  against  the  Picts.  Ten  years  later  he  penetrated 
into  Ayrshire,  and  finally  made  an  alliance  with  the  Picts, 
which  enabled  him  in  756  to  conquer  Strathclyde  and  take 
its  capital  Alcluyd,  or  Dumbarton.  But  at  the  moment  when 
his  triumph  seemed  complete,  his  army  was  utterly  destroyed 
as  it  withdrew  homewards,  and  so  crushing  was  the  calamity 
that  even  Eadberht  could  only  fling  down  his  scepter  and 
withdraw  with  his  brother  the  Archbishop  to  a  monastery. 
From  this  time  the  history  of  Northumbria  is  only  a  wild 
story  of  lawlessness  and  bloodshed.  King  after  king  was 
swept  away  by  treason  and  revolt,  the  country  fell  into  the 
hands  of  its  turbulent  nobles,  the  very  fields  lay  waste,  and 
the  land  was  scourged  by  famine  and  plague.  Isolated  from  the 
rest  of  the  country  during  fifty  years  of  anarchy,  the  northern 
realm  hardly  seemed  to  form  part  of  the  English  people. 

The  work  in  fact  of  national  consolidation  among  the  Eng- 
lish seemed  to  be  fatally  arrested.  The  battle  of  Burford 
had  finally  settled  the  division  of  Britain  into 

Mercia      three  equal  powers.     Wessex  was  now  as  firmly 

planted  south  of  the  Thames  as   Northumbria 

north  of  the  Humber.     But  this  crushing  defeat  was  far  from 

having  broken  the  Mercian  power;  and  under  Off  a.  \\lio  j 


THE   THREE    KINGDOMS.      685   TO    8^8.  53 

reign  fr<5m  758  to  796  covers  with  that  of  ./Ethelbald  nearly 
the  whole  of  the  eighth  century,  it  rose  to  a  height  unknown 
since  the  days  of  Wulfhere.  Years  however  had  to  pass  be- 
fore the  new  king  could  set  about  the  recovery  of  Kent; 
and  it  was  only  after  a  war  of  three  years  that  in  775  a  vic- 
tory at  Otford  gave  it  back  to  the  Mercian  ivalni.  With 
Kent  Offa  doubtless  recovered  Sussex  and  Surrey,  as  well  as 
Essex  and  London  ;  and  four  years  later  a  victory  at  Ben- 
sington  completed  the  conquest  of  the  district  that  now 
forms  the  shires  of  Oxford  and  Buckingham.  For  the  nine 
years  that  followed  however  Mercia  ventured  on  no  further 
attempt  to  extend  her  power  over  her  English  neighbors. 
Like  her  rivals,  she  turned  on  the  Welsh.  Pushing  after  779 
over  the  Severn,  whose  upper  course  had  served  till  now  as 
the  frontier  between  Briton  and  Englishman,  Offa  drove  the 
King  of  Powys  from  his  capital,  which  changed  its  old  name 
of  Pengwyrn  for  the  significant  English  title  of  the  Town  in 
the  Scrub  or  bush,  Scrobsbyryg,  or  Shrewsbury.  The  bor- 
der-line he  drew  after  his  inroad  is  'marked  by  a  huge  earth- 
work which  runs  from  the  mouth  of  Wye  to  that  of  Dee,  and 
is  still  called  Offa's  Dyke.  A  settlement  of  Englishmen  on 
the  land  between  this  dyke  and  the  Severn  served  as  a  mili- 
tary frontier  for  the  Mercian  realm.  Here,  as  in  the  later 
conquests  of  the  Northumbrians  and  the  West-Saxons,  the 
older  plan  of  driving  off  the  conquered  from  the  soil  was 
definitely  abandoned.  The  Welsh  who  chose  to  remain  dwelt 
undisturbed  among  their  English  conquerors  ;  and  it  was  prob- 
ably to  regulate  the  mutual  relations  of  the  two  races  that 
Offa  drew  up  the  code  of  laws  which  bore  his  name.  In  Mer- 
cia as  in  Northumbria  attacks  on  the  Britons  marked  the 
close  of  all  dreams  of  supremacy  over  the  English  themselves. 
Under  Offa  Mercia  sank  into  virtual  isolation.  The  anarchy 
into  which  Northumbria  sank  after  Eadberht's  death  never 
tempted  him  to  cross  the  Humber  ;  nor  was  he  shaken  from 
his  inaction  by  as  tempting  an  opportunity  which  presented 
itself  across  the  Thames.  It  must  have  been  in  the  yenrs 
that  followed  the  battle  of  Burford  that  the  West-Saxons 
made  themselves  masters  of  the  shrunken  realm  of  Dyvnaint, 
which  still  retains  its  old  name  in  the  form  of  Devon,  and 
pushed  their  frontier  westward  to  the  Tamar.  But  in  78G 
their  progress  was  stayed  by  a  fresh  outbreak  of  anarchy. 


54  HISTOllY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

The  strife  between  the  rivals  that  disputed  the  throne  was 
ended  by  the  defeat  of  Ecgberht,  the  heir  of  Ceawlin's  line, 
and  his  flight  to  Offa's  court.  The  Mercian  king  however 
used  his  presence  not  so  much  for  schemes  of  aggrandizement 
as  to  bring  about  a  peaceful  alliance  ;  and  in  789  Ecgberht 
was  driven  from  Mercia,  while  Offa  wedded  his  daughter  to 
the  West-Saxon  king  Beorhtric.  The  true  aim  of  Offa  in- 
deed was  to  unite  firmly  the  whole  of  Mid-Britain,  with  Kent 
as  its  outlet  towards  Europe,  under  the  Mercian  crown,  and 
to  mark  its  ecclesiastical  as  well  as  its  political  independence 
by  the  formation  in  787  of  an  archbishopric  of  Lichfield,  as  a 
check  to  the  see  of  Canterbury  in  the  south,  and  a  rival  to 
the  see  of  York  in  the  north. 

But  while  Offa  was  hampered  in  his  projects  by  the  dread 
of  the  West-Saxons  at  home,  he  was  forced  to  watch  jealously 
England  a  P°wer  which  had  risen  to  dangerous  greatness 
and  the  over  sea,  the  power  of  the  Franks.  Till  now,  the 
Pranks,  interests  of  the  English  people  had  lain  wholly 
within  the  bounds  of  the  Britain  they  had  won.  But  at  this 
moment  our  national  horizon  suddenly  widened,  and  the  for- 
tunes of  England  became  linked  to  the  general  fortunes  of 
Western  Christendom.  It  was  by  the  work  of  English  mis- 
sionaries that  Britain  was  first  drawn  into  political  relations 
with  the  Frankish  court.  The  Northumbrian  Willibrord, 
and  the  more  famous  West-Saxon  Boniface  or  Winfrith,  fol- 
lowed in  the  track  of  earlier  preachers,  both  Irish  and  Eng- 
lish, who  had  been  laboring  among  the  heathens  of  Germany, 
and  especially  among  those  who  had  now  become  subject  to 
the  Franks.  The  Frank  king  Pippin's  connection  with  the 
English  preachers  led  to  constant  intercourse  with  England  ; 
a  Northumbrian  scholar,  Alcuin,  was  the  center  of  the  liter- 
ary revival  at  his  court.  Pippin's  son  Charles  known  in  after 
days  as  Charles  the  Great,  maintained  the  same  interest  in 
English  affairs.  His  friendship  with  Alcuin  drew  him  into 
close  relations  with  Northern  Britain.  Ecgberht,  the  claim- 
ant of  the  West-Saxon  throne,  had  found  a  refuge  with  him 
since  Offa's  league  with  Beorhtric  in  787.  With  Offa  too  his 
relations  seem  to  have  been  generally  friendly.  But  the 
Mercian  king  shrank  cautiously  from  any  connection  which 
might  imply  a  recognition  of  Frankish  supremacy.  He  had 
indeed  good  grounds  for  caution.  The  costly  gifts  sent  by 


THE   THREE   KINGDOMS.      685    TO    828.  55 

Charles  to  the  monasteries  of  England  as  of  Ireland  showed 
his  will  to  obtain  an  influence  in  both  countries  ;  he  main- 
tained relations  with  Northumbria,  with  Kent,  with  the 
whole  English  Church.  Above  all,  he  harbored  at  his  court 
exiles  from  every  English  realm,  exiled  kings  from  North- 
umbria,  East-Anglian  thegns,  fugitives  from  Mercia  it- 
self ;  and  Ecgberhc  probably  marched  in  his  train  when  the 
shouts  of  the  people  and  priesthood  of  Kome  hailed  him  as 
Roman  Emperor.  When  the  death  of  Beorhtric  in  802  opened 
away  for  the  exile's  return  to  Wessex,  the  relations  of  Charles 
with  the  English  were  still  guided  by  the  dream  that  Britain, 
lost  to  the  Empire  at  Jie  hour  when  the  rest  of  the  western 
provinces  were  lost,  should  return  to  the  Empire  now  that 
Rome  had  risen  again  to  more  than  its  old  greatness  in  the 
west  ;  and  the  revolutions  which  were  distracting  the  English 
kingdoms  told  steadily  in  his  favor. 

The  years  since  Ecgberht's  flight  had  made  little  change  in 
the  state  of  Britain.  Offa's  completion  of  his  kingdom  by  the 
seizure  of  East  Anglia  had  been  followed  by  his 

death  in  796  ;   and  under  his  successor  Cenwulf  ^  Fa^  of 

.  ,  .  ,          .  ,       Mercia. 

the  Mercian   archbishopric  was  suppressed,  and 

there  was  no  attempt  to  carry  further  the  supremacy  of  the 
Midland  kingdom.  Cenwulf  stood  silently  by  when  Ecgberht 
mounted  the  West-Saxon  throne,  and  maintained  peace  with 
the  new  ruler  of  Wessex  throughout  his  reign.  The  first 
enterprise  of  Ecgberht  indeed  was  not  directed  against  his 
English  but  his  Welsh  neighbors.  In  815  he  marched  into 
the  heart  of  Cornwall,  and  after  eight  years  of  fighting,  the 
last  fragment  of  British  dominion  in  the  west  came  to  an  end. 
As  a  nation  Britain  had  passed  away  with  the  victories  of 
Deorham  and  Chester  ;  of  the  separate  British  peoples  who 
had  still  carried  on  the  struggle  with  the  three  English  king- 
doms, the  Britons  of  Cumbria  and  of  Strathclyde  had  al- 
ready bowed  to  Northumbrian  rule  ;  the  Britons  of  Wales 
had  owned  by  tribute  to  Offa  the  supremacy  of  Mercia  ;  the 
last  unconquered  British  state  of  West  Wales  as  far  as  the 
Land's  End  now  passed  under  the  mastery  of  Wessex. 

While  Wessex  was  regaining  the  strength  it  had  so  long 
lost,  its  rival  in  Mid-Britain  was  sinking  into  helpless  anarchy. 
Within,  Mercia  was  torn  by  a  civil  war  which  broke  out  on 
Cenwulf 's  death  in  821  ;  and  the  weakness  which  this  left 


56        HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

behind  was  seen  when  the  old  strife  with  Wessex  was  renewed 
by  his  successor  Beornwutt,  who  in  825  penetrated  into  Wilt- 
shire, and  was  defeated  in  a  bloody  battle  at  Ellandun.  All 
England  south  of  the  Thames  at  once  submitted  to  Ecgberht 
of  Wessex,  and  East  Anglia  rose  in  a  desperate  revolt  which 
proved  fatal  to  its  Mercian  rulers.  Two  of  its  kings  in  suc- 
cession fell  fighting  on  East-Anglian  soil  ;  and  a  third, 
Wiglaf,  had  hardly  mounted  the  Mercian  throne  when  his 
exhausted  kingdom  was  called  on  again  to  encounter  the 
West-Saxon.  Ecgberht  saw  that  the  hour  had  come  for  a 
decisive  onset.  In  828  his  army  marched  northward  with- 
out a  struggle  ;  Wiglaf  fled  helplessly  before  it ;  and  Mercia 
bowed  to  the  West-Saxon  overlordship.  From  Mercia  Ecg- 
berht marched  on  Northumbria  ;  but  half  a  century  of  an- 
archy had  robbed  that  kingdom  of  all  vigor,  and  pirates  were 
already  harrying  its  coast ;  its  nobles  met  him  at  Dore  in 
Derbyshire,  and  owned  him  as  their  overlord.  The  work 
that  Oswiu  and  ^Ethelbald  had  failed  to  do  was  done,  and 
the  whole  English  race  in  Britain  was  for  the  first  time  knit 
together  under  a  single  ruler.  Long  and  bitter  as  the  struggle 
for  independence  was  still  to  be  in  Mercia  and  in  the  north, 
yet  from  the  moment  that  Northumbria  bowed  to  its  West- 
Saxon  overlord,  England  was  made  in  fact  if  not  as  yet  in 
name. 

Section  V. — Wessex  and  the  Danes,  803—880. 

[Authorit ies.— Our  history  here  rests  mainly  on  the  English  (or  Anglo-Saxon ) 
Chronicle.  The  earlier  part  of  this  is  a  compilation,  and  consists  of  (1)  Annals  of 
the  conquest  of  South  Britain,  (2)  Short  notices  of  the  kings  and  bishops  of  Wes- 
sex, expanded  into  larger  form  by  copious  insertions  from  Bseda,  and  after  his 
death  by  briefer  additions  from  some  northern  sources.  (3)  It  is  probable  that 
these  materials  were  thrown  together,  and  perhaps  translated  from  Latin  into 
English,  in  Alfred's  time,  as  a  preface  to  the  far  fuller  annals  which  begin  with 
the  reign  of  JEthelwulf,  and  widen  into  a  great  contemporary  history  when  they 
reach  that  of  ^Elf red  himself.  Of  their  character  and  import  as  a  part  of  English 
literature,  I  have  spoken  in  the  text.  The  "Life  of  Alfred"  which  bears  the 
name  of  Asser  is  probably  contemporary,  or  at  any  rate  founded  on  contemporary 
authority.  There  is  an  admirable  modern  life  of  the  king  by  Dr.  Pauli.  For  the 
Danish  wars,  see  "  The  Conquest  of  England  "  by  J.  R.  Green.] 

The  effort  after  a  national  sovereignty  had  hardly  been  be- 
gun, when  the  Dane  struck  down  the  short-lived  greatness 
of  Wessex.     While  Britain  was  passing  through 
men     '"  ner  a£es  °^  conQuest  an(l  settlement,  the  dwellers 
in  the  Scandinavian  peninsula  and  the  isles  of 


ENGLAND 

in  the 

NINTH  CENTURY 


WtJ     Ova         F        *fc     i £*«i*4  X  '  wuiicj 

^pB^S^^SwtC^ ."?" 


WESSKX    ANI>    THK    DANKS.      «0^    TO   880.  57 

the  Baltic  had  lain  hidden  from  Christendom,  waging  their 
battle  for  existence  with  a  stern  climate,  a  barren  soil,  and 
stormy  seas.  Forays  and  plunder-raids  over  sea  eked  out 
their  scanty  livelihood,  and  as  the  "eighth  century  closed, 
these  raids  found  a  wider  sphere  than  the  waters  of  the  north. 
Ecgberht  had  not  yet  brought  all  Britain  under  his  sway 
when  the  Wikings  or  "  creek-men,"  as  the  adventurers  were 
called,  were  seen  hovering  off  the  English  coast,  and  growing 
in  numbers  and  hardihood  as  they  crept  southward  to  the 
Thames.  The  first  sight  of  the  northmen  is  as  if  the  hand 
on  the  dial  of  history  had  gone  back  three  hundred  years. 
The  Norwegian  fiords,  the  Frisian  sandbanks,  poured  forth 
pirate  fleets  such  as  had  swept  the  seas  in  the  days  of  Hengest 
and  Cerdic.  There  was  the  same  wild  panic  as  the  black 
boats  of  the  invaders  struck  inland  along  the  river-reaches, 
or  moored  around  the  river  islets,  the  same  sights  of  horror, 
firing  of  homesteads,  slaughter  of  men,  women  driven  off 
to  slavery  or  shame,  children  tossed  on  pikes  or  sold  in  the 
market-place,  as  when  the  English  invaders  attacked  Britain. 
Christian  priests  were  again  slain  at  the  altar  by  worshipers 
of  Woden  ;  letters,  arts,  religion,  government  disappeared 
before  these  northmen  as  before  the  northmen  of  old.  But 
when  the  wild  burst  of  the  storm  was  over,  land,  people, 
government  reappeared  unchanged.  England  still  remained 
England  ;  the  conquerors  sank  quietly  into  the  mass  of  those 
around  them  ;  and  Woden  yielded  without  a  struggle  to 
Christ.  The  secret  of  this  difference  between  the  two  inva- 
sions was  that  the  battle  was  no  longer  between  men  of  dif- 
ferent races.  It  was  no  longer  a  fight  between  Briton  and 
German,  between  Englishman  and  Welshman.  The  life  of 
these  northern  folk  was  in  the  main  the  life  of  the  earlier 
Englishmen.  Their  customs,  their  religion,  their  social  order 
were  the  same  ;  they  were  in  fact  kinsmen  bringing  back  to 
an  England  that  had  forgotten  its  origins  the  barbaric  Eng- 
land of  its  pirate  forefathers.  Nowhere  over  Europe  was 
the  fight  so  fierce,  because  nowhere  else  were  the  combatants 
men  of  one  blood  and  one  speech.  But  just  for  this  reason 
the  fusion  of  the  northmen  with  their  foes  was  nowhere  so 
peaceful  and  so  complete. 

Britain  had  to  meet  a  double  attack  from  its  new  assailants. 
The  northmen  of  Norway  had  struck  westward  to  the  Shet- 


f>8  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

lands  and  Orkneys,  and  passed  thence  by  the  Hebrides 
to  Ireland  ;  while  their  kinsmen  who  now  dwelt  in  the 
old  Engle-land  steered  along  the  coasts  of  Frisia 

and    Gau1'      Slint    in    between   tne    two    lines    ol> 
their  advance,  Britain  lay  in  the  very  center  of 

their  field  of  operations  ;  and  at  the  close  of  Ecgberht's  reign, 
when  the  decisive  struggle  first  began,  their  attacks  were 
directed  to  the  two  extremities  of  the  West-Saxon  realm. 
After  having  harried  East  Anglia  and  slain  in  Kent,  they 
swept  up  the  Thames  to  the  plunder  of  London  ;  while  the 
pirates  in  the  Irish  Channel  roused  all  Cornwall  to  revolt. 
It  was  in  the  alliance  of  the  uorthmen  with  the  Britons  that 
the  danger  of  these  earlier  inroads  lay.  Ecgberht  indeed 
defeated  the  united  forces  of  these  two  enemies  in  a  victory 
at  Hengest-dun,  but  an  unequal  struggle  was  carried  on  for 
years  to  come  in  the  Wessex  west  of  Selwood.  King  ^Ethel- 
wulf,  who  followed  Ecgberht  in  839,  fought  strenuously  in 
the  defense  of  his  realm  ;  in  the  defeat  of  Charmouth,  as  in 
the  victory  at  Aclea,  he  led  his  troops  in  person  against  the 
sea-robbers  ;  and  he  drove  back  the  Welsh  of  North  Wales, 
who  were  encouraged  by  the  invaders  to  rise  in  arms.  North- 
men and  Welshmen  were  beaten  again  and  again,  and  yet  the 
peril  grew  greater  year  by  year.  The  dangers  to  the  Christian 
faith  from  these  heathen  assailants  roused  the  clergy  to  his 
aid.  S\vithun,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  became  ^Ethelwulf's 
minister  ;  Ealhstan,  Bishop  of  Sherborne,  was  among  the 
soldiers  of  the  Cross,  and  with  the  ealdormen  led  the  fyrds 
of  Somerset  and  Dorset  to  drive  the  invaders  from  the  mouth 
of  the  Parret.  At  last  hard  fighting  gained  the  realm  a  little 
respite  ;  in  858  ^Ethelwulf  died  in  peace,  and  for  eight  years 
the  northrnen  left  the  land  in  quiet.  But  these  earlier  forays 
had  been  mere  preludes  to  the  real  burst  of  the  storm.  When 
it  broke  in  its  full  force  upon  the  island,  it  was  no  longer  a 
series  of  plunder-raids,  but  the  invasion  of  Britain  by  a  host 
of  conquerors  who  settled  as  they  conquered.  The  work  was 
now  taken  up  by  another  people  of  Scandinavian  blood,  the 
Danes.  At  the  accession  of  ^Ethelred,  the  third  of  ^Ethel- 
wulf's  sons,  who  had  mounted  the  throne  after  the  short 
reigns  of  his  brothers,  these  new  assailants  fell  on  Britain. 
As  they  came  to  the  front,  the  character  of  the  attack  wholly 
changed.  The  petty  squadrons  which  had  till  now  harassed 


WESSEX   AND  THE   DANKS.      802   TO   880.  59 

the  coast  of  Britain  made  way  for  larger  hosts  thau  had  as 
yet  fallen  on  any  country  in  the  west  ;  while  raid  and  foray 
were  replaced  by  the_regular  campaign  of  armies  who  marched 
to  conquer,  and  whose  aim  was  to  settle  on  the  land  they 
won.  In  866  the  Dunes  landed  in  East  Anglia,  and  marched 
in  the  next  spring  across  the  Humber  upon  York.  'Civil 
strife  as  usual  distracted  the  energies  of  Northumbria.  Its 
subject-crown  was  disputed  by  two  claimants,  and  when  they 
united  to  meet  this  common  danger  both  fell  in  the  same  de- 
feat before  the  walls  of  their  capital.  Northumbria  at  once 
submitted  to  the  Danes,  and  Mercia  was  only  saved  by  a  hasty 
march  of  King  ^Ethelred  to  its  aid.  But  the  Peace  of  Not- 
tingham, by  which  ^Ethelred  rescued  Mercia  in  868,  left  the 
Danes  free  to  turn  to  the  rich  spoil  of  the  great  abbeys  of 
the  Fen.  Peterborough,  Crowland,  Ely,  went  up  in  flames, 
and  their  monks  fled  or  were  slain  among  the  ruins.  From 
thence  they  struck  suddenly  for  East  Anglia  itself,  whose 
king,  Eadmond,  brought  prisoner  before  the  Danish  leaders, 
\vas  bound  to  a  tree  and  shot  to  death  with  arrows.  His 
martyrdom  by  the  heathen  made  him  the  St.  Sebastian  of 
English  legend ;  in  latter  days  his  figure  gleamed  from  the 
pictured  windows  of  church  after  church  along  the  eastern 
coast,  and  the  stately  abbey  of  St.  Edmundsbury  rose  over 
his  relics.  With  Eadmund  ended  the  line  of  East  Anglian 
under-kings,  for  his  kingdom  was  not  only  conquered,  but 
ten  years  later  it  was  divided  among  the  soldiers  of  a  Danish 
host,  whose  leader,  Gu thrum,  assumed  its  crown.  How  great 
was  the  terror  stirred  by  these  successive  victories  was  shown 
in  the  action  of  Mercia,  which,  though  it  was  as  yet  still 
spared  from  actual  conquest,  crouched  in  terror  before  the 
Danes,  acknowledged  them  in  870  as  its  overlords,  and  paid 
them  tribute. 

In  four  years  the  work  of  Ecgberht  had  been  undone,  and 
England  north  of  the  Thames  had  been  torn  from  the  over- 
lordship  of  Wessex.     So  rapid  a  conquest  as  the 
Danish  conquests   of  Northumbria,  Mercia,  and     ^nesg 
East  Anglia,  had  only  been  made  possible  by  the 
temper  of  these  kingdoms  themselves.     To  them  the  conquest 
was  simply  their  transfer  from  one  overlord  to  another,  and 
it  wou\d  seem  as  if  they  preferred  the  lordship  of  the  Dane  to 
the  ovorlordship  of  the  West-Saxon.     It  was  another  sign  of 


GO  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH    VEOI'LE. 

the  enormous  difficulty  of  welding  these  kingdoms  together 
into  a  single  people.  The  time  had  now  come  for  Wessex  to 
fight,  not  for  supremacy,  but  for  life.  As  yet  it  seemed  par- 
alyzed by  terror.  With  the  exception  of  his  one  march  on 
Nottingham,  King  ^Ethelred  had  done  nothing  to  save  his 
under-kingdoms  from  the  wreck.  But  the  Danes  no  sooner 
pushed  up  Thames  to  Reading  than  the  West-Saxons,  attacked 
on  their  own  soil,  turned  fiercely  at  bay.  The  enemy  pene- 
trated indeed  into  the  heart  of  Wessex,  as  far  as  the 
heights  that  overlook  the  Vale  of  White  Horse.  A  desperate 
battle  drove  them  back  from  Ashdown  ;  but  their  camp  in 
the  tongue  of  land  between  the  Keunet  and  Thames  proved 
impregnable,  and  fresh  forces  pushed  up  the  Thames  to  join 
their  fellows.  In  the  midst  of  the  struggle  -^Ethelred  died, 
and  left  his  youngest  brother  y£lfred  to  meet  afresh  advance 
of  the  foe.  They  had  already  encamped  at  Wilton,  before 
the  young  king  could  meet  them,  and  a  series  of  defeats 
forced  him  to  buy  the  withdrawal  of  the  pirates,  and  win  a 
few  years'  breathing-space  for  his  realm.  It  was  easy  for  the 
quick  eye  of  Alfred  to  see  that  the  Danes  had  withdrawn 
simply  with  a  view  of  gaining  firmer  footing  for  a  new 
attack  ;  indeed,  three  years  had  hardly  passed  before  Mercia 
was  invaded,  and  its  under-king  driven  over  sea  to  make  place 
for  a  tributary  of  the  Danes.  From  Repton  half  their  host 
marched  northwards  to  the  Tyne,  dividing  a  land  where  there 
was  little  left  to  plunder,  colonizing  and  tilling  it,  while  Guth- 
rum  led  the  rest  iritoEast  Anglia  to  prepare  for  their  next  year's 
attack  on  Wessex.  The  greatness  of  the  contest  had  now 
drawn  to  Britain  the  whole  strengh  of  the  northmen  ;  and  it 
was  with  a  host  swollen  by  reinforcements  from  every  quarter 
that  Guthrum  at  last  set  sail  for  the  south.  In  876  the 
Danish  fleet  appeared  before  Wareham .  and  when  a  treaty 
with  Alfred  won  their  withdrawal,  they  threw  themselves 
into  Exeter  and  allied  themselves  with  the  Welsh.  Through 
the  winter  Alfred  girded  himself  for  this  new  peril.  At  break 
of  spring  his  army  closed  round  the  town,  while  a  hired 
fleet  cruised  off  the  coast  to  guard  against  rescue.  The 
peril  of  their  brethren  in  Exeter  forced  a  part  of  the 
Danish  host  which  had  remained  at  Wareham  to  put  to  sea 
with  the  view  of  aiding  them,  but  they  were  driven  by  a 
storm  on  the  rocks  of  Swanage,  and  Exeter  was  at  last 


WESSEX   AND   THE   DANES.      802   TO    880.  61 

starved  into  surrender,  while  the  Danes  again  swore  to  leave 
Wessex. 

They  withdrew  in  fact  to  Gloucester,  but  ^Elfred  had  hardly 
disbanded  his  troops  when  his  enemies,  roused  by  the  arrival 
of  fresh  hordes  eager  for  plunder,  reappeared  at 
Chippenham,  and  at  the  opening  of  878  marched 
ravaging  over  the  land.  The  surprise  was  com- 
plete, and  for  a  month  or  two  the  general  panic  left  no  hope 
of  resistance.  ^Elfred,  with  his  small  band  of  followers,  could 
only  throw  himself  into  a  fort  raised  hastily  in  the  isle  of 
Atheluey,  among  the  marshes  of  the  Parret.  It  was  a  posi- 
tion from  which  he  could  watch  closely  the  movements  of  his 
foes,  and  with  the  first  burst  of  spring  he  called  the  thegns 
of  Somerset  to  his  standard,  and  still  gathering  his  troops  as 
he  moved,  marched  through  Wiltshire  on  the  Danes.  He 
found  their  host  at  Islington,  defeated  it  in  a  great  battle,  and 
after  a  siege  of  fourteen  days,  forced  them  to  surrender.  Their 
leader,  Guthrum,  was  baptized  as  a  Christian,  and  bound  by  a 
solemn  peace  or  "  frith  "  at  Wedrnore  in  Somerset.  ]n  form 
the  Peace  of  Wedmore  seemed  indeed  a  surrender  of  the  bulk 
of  Britain  to  its  invaders.  All  Northumbria,  all  East  Anglia, 
the  half  of  Central  England  was  left  subject  to  the  northmen. 
Throughout  this  Dane-law  as  it  was  called,  the  conquerors 
settled  down  among  the  conquered  population  as  lords  of  the 
soil,  thickly  in  the  north  and  east,  more  thinly  in  the  central 
districts,  but  everywhere  guarding  jealously  their  old  isola- 
tion and  gathering  in  separate  "  heres  "  or  armies  round  towns 
which  were  only  linked  in  loose  confederacies.  The  peace 
had  in  fact  saved  little  more  than  Wessex  itself.  But  in 
saving  Wessex  it  saved  England.  The  spell  of  terror  was 
broken.  The  tide  of  invasion  was  turned.  Only  one  short 
struggle  broke  a  peace  of  fifteen  years. 

With  the  Peace  of  Wedmore  in  878  began  a  work  even  more 
noble  than  this  deliverance  of  Wessex  from  the  Dane.     "  So 
long  as  I  have  lived,"  wrote  Alfred  in  later  days, 
"  I  have  striven    to  live  worthily."     He  longed     Alfred, 
when  death  overtook  him  "  to  leave  to  the  men  that 
come  after  a  remembrance  of  him  in  good  works/'    The  aim 
has  been  more  than  fulfilled.     The  memory  of  the  life  and 
doings  of  the  noblest  of  English  rulers  has  come  down  to  ne 
living  and  distinct  through  the  mist  of  exaggeration   and 


62  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

legend  that  gathered  round  it.  Politically  or  intellectually, 
the  sphere  of  yElfred's  action  may  seem  too  small  to  justify  a 
comparison  of  him  with  the  few  whom  the  world  claims  as  its 
greatest  men.  What  really  lifts  him  to  their  level  is  the 
moral  grandeur  of  his  life.  He  lived  solely  for  the  good  of 
his  people.  He  is  the  first  instance  in  the  history  of  Chris- 
tendom of  a  ruler  who  put  aside  every  personal  aim  or  ambi- 
tion to  devote  himself  wholly  to  the  welfare  of  those  whom  he 
ruled.  Jn  his  mouth  "to  live  worthily"  meant  a  life  of 
justice,  temperance,  self-sacrifice.  The  Peace  of  Wedmore 
at  once  marked  the  temper  of  the  man.  Warrior  and  con- 
queror as  he  was,  with  a  disorganized  England  before  him,  he 
set  aside  at  thirty  the  dream  of  conquest  to  leave  behind  him 
the  memory,  not  of  victories,  but  of  "  good  works/'  of  daily 
toils  by  which  he  secured  peace,  good  government,  education 
for  his  people.  His  policy  was  one  of  peace.  He  abandoned  all 
thought  of  the  recovery  of  the  West-Saxon  overlordship. 
With  England  across  the  Watling  Street,  a  Eoman  road 
which  ran  from  Chester  to  London,  in  other  words  with 
Northumbria,  East-Anglia,  and  the  half  of  -Mercia,  ^Elfred 
had  nothing  to  do.  All  that  he  retained  was  his  own  Wessex, 
with  the  upper  part  of  the  valley  of  the  Thames,  the  whole 
valley  of  the  Severn,  and  the  rich  plains  of  the  Mersey  and 
the  Dee.  Over  these  latter  districts,  to  which  the  name  of 
Mercia  was  now  confined,  while  the  rest  of  the  Mercian  king- 
dom became  known  as  the  Five  Boroughs  of  the  Danes, 
^Elfred  set  the  ealdorman  ^Ethelred,  the  husband  of  his 
daughter  ^Ethelflaed,  a  ruler  well  fitted  by  his  courage  and 
activity  to  guard  Wessex  against  inroads  from  the  north. 
Against  invasion  from  the  sea,  he  provided  by  the  better  or- 
ganization of  military  service,  and  by  the  creation  of  a  fleet. 
The  country  was  divided  into  military  districts,  each  five 
hides  sending  an  armed  man  at  the  king's  summons  and 
providing  him  with  food  and  pay.  The  duty  of  every 
freeman  to  join  the  host  remained  binding  as  before ;  but 
the  host  or  fyrd  was  divided  into  two  halves,  each  of  which 
took  by  turns  its  service  in  the  field,  while  the  other  half 
guarded  its  own  burhs  and  townships.  To  win  the  sea  was 
a  harder  task  than  to  win  the  land,  and  JElfred  had  not 
to  organize,  but  to  create  a  fleet.  He  steadily  developed, 
however  his  new  naval  force,  and  in  the  reign  of  his  son  a 


WESSEX   AND   THE   DANES.      802   TO    880.  63 

fleet  of  a  hundred  English  ships   held  the  mastery  of  the 
Channel. 

The  defense  of  his  realm  thus  provided  for,  he  devoted 
himself  to  its  good  government.  In  Wessex  itself,  spent  by 
years  of  deadly  struggle,  with  law,  order,  the  ma- 
chinery of  justice  and  government  weakened  by 
the  pirate  storm,  material  and  moral  civilization 
had  alike  to  be  revived.  His  work  was  of  a  simple  and  prac- 
tical order.  In  politics  as  in  war,  or  in  his  after  dealings  with 
letters,  he  took  what  was  closest  at  hand  and  made  the  best 
of  it.  In  the  reorganization  of  public  justice  his  main  work 
was  to  enforce  submission  to  the  justice  of  hundred-moot 
and  shire-moot  alike  on  noble  and  ceorl,  "  who  were  con- 
stantly at  obstinate  variance  with  one  another  in  the  folk- 
moots,  so  that  hardly  any  one  of  them  would  grant  that  to  be 
true  doom  that  had  been  judged  for  doom  by  the  ealdorman 
and  reeves."  "  All  the  law  dooms  of  his  land  that  were  given 
in  his  absence  he  used  to  keenly  question,  of  what  sort  they 
were,  just  or  unjust ;  and  if  he  found  any  wrongdoing  in  them 
he  would  call  the  judges  themselves  before  him."  "  Day  and 
night,"  says  his  biographer,  he  was  busied  in  the  correc- 
tion of  local  injustice  :  "  for  in  that  whole  kingdom  the  poor 
had  no  helpers,  or  few,  save  the  king  himself."  Of  a  new 
legislation  the  king  had  no  thought.  "  Those  things  which 
I  met  with,"  he  tells  us,  "  either  of  the  days  of  Ine,  my  kins- 
man, or  of  Oifa,  king  of  the  Mercians,  or  of  ^Ethelberht,  who 
first  among  the  English  race  received  baptism,  those  which 
seemed  to  me  rightest,  those  I  have  gathered,  and  rejected 
the  others."  But  unpretending  as  the  work  might  seem,  its 
importance  was  great.  With  it  began  the  conception  of  a 
national  law.  The  notion  of  separate  systems  of  tribal  cus- 
toms for  the  separate  peoples  passed  away  ;  and  the  codes  of 
Wessex,  Mercia,  and  Kent  blended  in  the  doom-book  of  a 
common  England. 

The  new  strength  whiclrhad  been  won  for  Alfred's  king- 
dom in  six  years  of  peace  was  shown  when  the  next  pirate 
onset  fell  on  the  land.  A  host  from  Gaul  pushed 
up  the  Thames  and  thence  to  Rochester,  while  the 
Danes  of  Guthrum's  kingdom  set  aside  the  Peace 
of  Wed  more  and  gave  help  to  their  brethren.  The  war  how- 
ever was  short,  and  ended  in  victory  so  complete  on  Alfred's 


64  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

side  that  in  886  a  new  peace  was  made  which  pushed  the 
West-Saxon  frontier  forward  into  the  realm  of  Guthrum,  and 
tore  from  the  Danish  hold  London  and  half  of  the  old  East- 
Saxon  kingdom.  From  this  moment  the  Danes  were  thrown  on 
an  attitude  of  defense,  and  the  change  made  itself  at  once  felt 
among  the  English.  The  foundation  of  a  new  national  mon- 
archy was  laid.  "  All  the  Angel-cyn  turned  to  Alfred,"  says 
the  chronicle,  "  save  those  that  were  under  bondage  to  Danish 
men."  Hardly  had  this  second  breathing-space  been  won 
than  the  king  turned  again  to  his  work  of  restoration.  The 
spirit  of  adventure  that  made  him  to  the  last  a  mighty  hunter, 
the  reckless  daring  of  his  early  manhood,  took  graver  form  in 
an  activity  that  found  time  amidst  the  cares  of  state  for  the 
daily  duties  of  religion,  for  converse  with  strangers,  for  study 
and  translation,  for  learning  poems  by  heart,  for  planning 
buildings  and  instructing  craftsmen  in  gold-work,  for  teach- 
ing even  falconers  and  dog-keepers  their  business.  But  his 
mind  was  far  from  being  prisoned  within  his  own  island. 
He  listened  with  keen  attention  to  tales  of  far-off  lands,  to 
the  Norwegian  Othere's  account  of  his  journey  round  the 
North  Cape  to  explore  the  White  Sea,  and  Wulfstan's  cruise 
along  the  coast  of  Esthonia  ;  envoys  bore  his  presents  to  the 
churches  of  India  and  Jerusalem,  and  an  annual  mission  car- 
ried Peter's-pence  to  Rome.  Eestless  as  he  was,  his  activity 
was  the  activity  of  a  mind  strictly  practical.  ^Elfred  was 
pre-eminently  a  man  of  business,  careful  of  detail,  laborious 
and  methodical.  He  carried  in  his  bosom  a  little  hand-book 
in  which  he  jotted  down  things  as  they  struck  him,  now  a 
bit  of  family  genealogy,  now  a  prayer,  now  a  story  such  as  that 
of  Bishop  Ealdhelm  singing  sacred  songs  on  the  bridge.  Each 
hour  of  the  king's  day  had  its  peculiar  task  ;  there  was  the  same 
order  in  the  division  of  his  revenue  and  in  the  arrangement  of 
his  court.  But  active  and  busy  as  he  was,  his  temper  remained 
simple  and  kindly.  We  have  few  stories  of  his  life  that  are 
more  than  than  mere  legends,  but  even  legend  itself  never 
ventured  to  depart  from  the  outlines  of  a  character  which 
men  knew  so  well.  During  his  months  of  waiting  at  Athel- 
ney,  while  the  country  was  overrun  by  the  Danes,  he  was 
said  to  have  entered  a  peasant's  hut,  and  to  have  been  bidden 
by  the  housewife,  who  did  not  recognize  him,  to  turn  the 
cakes  which  were  baking  on  the  hearth.  The  young  king 


WESSEX  AKD  Tin:  HANKS.     802  TO  880.          65 

did  as  he  was  bidden,  but  in  the  sad  thoughts  which  came 
over  him  he  forgot  his  task,  and  bore  in  amused  silence  the 
scolding  of  the  good  wife,  who  found  her  cakes  spoilt  on  her 
return.  This  tale,  if  nothing  more  than  a  tale,  could  never 
have  been  told  of  a  man  without  humor.  Tradition  told  of 
his  genial  good-nature,  of  his  chattings  over  the  adventures 
of  his  life,  and  above  all  of  his  love  for  song.  In  his  busiest 
days  Alfred  found  time  to  learn  the  old  songs  of  his  race  by 
heart,  and  bade  them  be  taught  in  the  palace-school.  As  he 
translated  the  tales  of  the  heathen  mythology  he  lingered 
fondly  over  and  expanded  them,  and  in  moments  of  gloom  he 
found  comfort  in  the  music  of  the  Psalms. 

Neither  the  wars  nor  the  legislation  of  Alfred  were  destined 
to  leave  such  lasting  traces  upon  England  as  the  impulse  he 
gave  to  its  literature.  His  end  indeed  even  in 
this  was  practical  rather  than  literary.  What  he 
aimed  at  was  simply  the  education  of  his  peo- 
ple. Letters  and  civilization  had  almost  vanished  in  Great 
Britain.  In  \Vcsscxitselflearninghaddisappeared.  "When 
I  began  to  reign,"  said  ^Elfred,  "  I  cannot  remember  one 
south  of  Thames  who  could  explain  his  service-book  in  Eng- 
lish." The  ruin  the  Danes  had  Avrought  had  been  no  mere 
material  ruin.  In  Northumbria  the  Danish  sword  had  left 
but  few  survivors  of  the  school  of  Ecgberht  or  Baeda.  To 
remedy  this  ignorance  Alfred  desired  that  at  least  every  free- 
born  youth  who  possessed  the  means  should  "  abide  at  his 
book  till  he  can  well  understand  English  writing."  He  him- 
self superintended  a  school  which  he  had  established  for  the 
young  nobles  of  his  court.  At  home  he  found  none  to  help 
him  in  his  educational  efforts  but  a  few  prelates  and  priests 
who  remained  in  the  fragment  of  Mercia  which  had  been  saved 
from  the  invaders,  and  a  Welsh  bishop,  Asser.  "  Formerly," 
the  king  writes  bitterly,  "  men  came  hither  from  foreign 
lands  to  seek  for  instruction,  and  now  when  we  desire  it  we 
can  only  obtain  it  from  abroad."  He  sought  it  among  the 
West-Franks  and  the  East-Franks.  A  scholar  named  Grim- 
bald  came  from  St.  Omer  to  preside  over  the  abbey  he  founded 
at  Winchester  ;  and  John  the  Old-Saxon  was  fetched,  it  may 
be  from  the  Westphalian  abbey  of  Corbey,  to  rule  a  mon- 
astery that  ./Elf red's  gratitude  for  his  deliverance  from  the 
Danes  raised  in  the  marshes  of  Athelnov. 


66  HISTORY    OF    THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

The  work,  however,  which  most  told  on  English  culture 
was  done  not  by  these  scholars  but  by  the  king  himself.  ^Elfred 
resolved  to  throw  open  to  his  people  in  their  own 
tongue  tne  knowledge  which  had  till  then  been 
limited  to  the  clergy.  He  took  his  books  as  he 
found  them  ;  they  were  the  popular  manuals  of  his  age  ;  the 
compilation  of  Orosius,  then  the  one  accessible  book  of  uni- 
versal history,  the  history  of  his  own  people  by  Baeda,  the 
Consolation  of  Boethius,  the  Pastoral  of  Pope  Gregory.  He 
translated  these  works  into  English,  but  he  was  far  more  than 
a  translator,  he  was  an  editor  for  the  people.  Here  he 
omitted,  there  he  expanded.  He  enriched  Orosius  by  a  sketch 
of  the  new  geographical  discoveries  in  the  north.  He  gave  a 
West-Saxon  form  to  his  selections  from  Bseda.  In  one  place 
he  stops  to  explain  his  theory  of  government,  his  wish  for  a 
thicker  population,  his  conception  of  national  welfare  as  con- 
sisting in  a  due  balance  of  the  priest,  the  soldier,  and  the 
churl.  The  mention  of  Nero  spurs  him  to  an  outbreak  on 
the  abuses  of  power.  The  cold  Providence  of  Boethius  gives 
way  to  an  enthusiastic  acknowledgment  of  the  goodness  of 
God.  As  Alfred  writes,  his  large-hearted  nature  flings  off 
its  royal  mantle,  and  he  talks  as  a  man  to  men.  "  Do  not 
blame  me,"  he  prays  with  a  charming  simplicity,  "  if  any 
know  Latin  better  than  I,  for  every  man  must  say  what  he 
says  and  do  what  he  does  according  to  his  ability."  But 
simple  as  was  his  aim,  vElfred  created  English  literature. 
Before  him,  England  possessed  noble  poems  in  the  work  of 
Caedmon,  and  his  fellow-singers,  and  a  train  of  ballads  and 
battle-songs.  Prose  she  had  none.  The  mighty  roll  of  the 
books  that  fill  her  libraries  begins  with  the  translations  of 
Alfred,  and  above  all  with  the  chronicle  of  his  reign.  It 
seems  likely  that  the  king's  rendering  of  Bteda's  history  gave 
the  first  impulse  towards  the  compilation  of  what  is  known  as 
the  English  or  Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle,  which  was  certainly 
thrown  into  its  present  form  during  his  reign.  The  meager 
lists  of  the  kings  of  Wessex  and  of  the  bishops  of  Winchester, 
which  had  been  preserved  from  older  times,  were  roughly  ex- 
panded into  a  national  history  by  insertions  from  Baeda  ;  but 
it  is  when  it  reaches  the  reign  of  ^Elfred  that  the  Chronicle 
suddenly  widens  into  the  vigorous  narrative,  full  of  life  and 
originality,  that  marks  the  gift  of  a  new  power  to  the  English 


THE   WEST-SAXON   REALM.      893   TO   1013.  67 

tongue.  Varying  as  it  does  from  age  to  age  in  historic  value, 
it  remains  the  first  vernacular  history  of  any  Teutonic  people, 
the  earliest  and  most  venerable  monument  of  Teutonic  prose. 
The  writer  of  English  history  may  be  pardoned  if  he  lingers 
too  fondly  over  the  figure  of  the  king  in  whose  court,  at  whose 
impulse,  it  may  be  in  whose  very  words,  English  history  begins. 


Section  VI.—  The  West-Saxon  Realm,    893—1013. 

[Authorities.—  Mainly  the  English  Chronicle,  which  varies  much  during  this 
period.  Through  the  reign  of  Eadward  it  is  copious,  and  a  Mercian  chronicle 
is  embedded  in  it  ;  its  entries  then  become  scanty,  and  are  broken  with  grand 
English  songs  till  the  reign  of  JEthelred,  when  its  fulness  returns.  "  Florence 
of  Worcester  "  is  probably  a  translation  of  a  copy  of  the  Chronicle  now  lost. 
The  "  Laws  "  form  the  basis  of  our  constitutional  knowledge  of  the  time,  and 
fall  into  two  classes.  Those  of  Eadward.  .(Ethelstan,  Eadmund,  and  Eadgar  are, 
like  the  earlier  laws  of  ^Ethelberht  and  Ine,  "  mainly  of  the  nature  of  amendments 
of  custom."  Those  of  -Alfred,  ^thelred,  Cnut,  with  those  that  bear  the  name 
of  Eadward  the  Confessor,  "  aspire  to  the  character  of  codes."  All  are  printed 
in  Mr.  Thorpe's  "  Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes  of  the  Anglo-Saxons  ;  "  but  the 
extracts  given  by  Dr.  Stubbs  ("  Select  Charters,"  pp.  59-74)  contain  all  that 
directly  bears  on  our  constitution.  Mr.  Kemble's  "  Codex  Diplomaticus  ^Evi  Saz- 
onici  "  contains  a  vast  mass  of  charters,  etc.,  belonging  to  this  period.  The  lives  of 
Dunstan  are  collected  by  Dr.  Stubbs  in  one  of  the  Rolls  volumes.  For  this  period 
see  also  Mr.  Green's  "Conquest  of  England."] 


's  work  of  peace  was  however  to  be  once  more  inter- 
rupted by  a  new  invasion  which  in  893  broke  under  the 
Danish  leader  Hasting  upon  England.  After  a 
year's  fruitless  struggle  to  force  the  strong  posi- 
tion  in  which  ^Elfred  covered  Wessex,  the  Danish 
forces  left  their  fastnesses  in  the  Andredsweald  and  crossed 
the  Thames,  while  a  rising  of  the  Danelaw  in  their  aid  re- 
vealed the  secret  of  this  movement.  Followed  by  the  Lon- 
doners, the  king's  son  Eadward  and  the  Mercian  Ealdorman 
^Ethelred  stormed  the  Danish  camp  in  Essex,  followed  the 
host  as  it  rode  along  Thames  to  rouse  new  revolts  in  Wales, 
caught  it  on  the  Severn,  and  defeating  it  with  a  great  slaugh- 
ter, drove  it  back  to  its  old  quarters  in  Essex.  Alfred  himself 
held  Exeter  against  attack  from  a  pirate  fleet  and  their  West- 
Welsh  allies  ;  arid  when  Hasting  once  more  repeated  his  dash 
upon  the  west  and  occupied  Chester,  ^Ethelred  drove  him 
from  his  hold  and  forced  him  to  fall  back  to  his  camp  on  the 
Leu.  Here  Alfred  came  to  his  lieutenant's  aid,  and  the 
capture  of  the  Danish  ships  by  the  two  forts  with  which  the 


68  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

king  barred  the  river  virtually  ended  the  war.  The  Danes 
streamed  back  from  Wales,  whither  they  had  retreated,  to 
their  old  quarters  in  Frankland,  and  the  new  English  fleet 
drove  the  freebooters  from  the  Channel. 

The  last  years  of  Alfred's  life  seem  to  have  been  busied  in 
providing  a  new  defense  for  his  realm  by  the  formation  of 
alliances  with  states  whom  a  common  interest  drew  together 
against  the  pirates.  But  four  years  had  hardly  passed  since 
the  victory  over  Hasting  when  his  death  left  the  kingdom  to 
his  son  Eadward.  Eadward,  though  a  vigorous  and  active 
ruler,  clung  to  his  father's  policy  of  rest.  It  was  not  till  910 
that  a  rising  of  the  Danes  on  his  northern  frontier,  and  an 
attack  of  a  pirate  fleet  on  the  southern  coast,  forced  him  to 
reopen  the  war.  With  his  sister  ^Ethelflasd,  who  was  in  912 
left  sole  ruler  of  Mercia  by  the  death  of  the  Euldorman  ^Ethel- 
red,  he  undertook  the  systematic  reduction  of  the  Danelaw. 
While  he  bridled  East  Anglia  by  the  seizure  of  southern 
Essex,  and  the  erection  of  the  forts  of  Hertford  and  W'itham, 
the  fame  of  Mercia  was  safe  in  the  hands  of  its  "Lady." 
jEthelflaed  girded  her  strength  for  the  conquest  of  the  "  Five 
Boroughs,"  the  rude  Danish  confederacy  which  had  taken 
the  place  of  the  eastern  half  of  the  older  Mercian  kingdom. 
Derby  represented  the  original  Mercia  on  the  upper  Trent, 
Lincoln  the  Lindiswaras,  Leicester  the  Middle-English, 
Stamford  the  province  of  the  Gyrwas — the  marshmen  of  the 
Fens — Nottingham  probably  that  of  the  Southumbrians. 
Each  of  the  "Five  Boroughs"  seems  to  have  been  ruled  by 
its  earl  with  his  separate  "host  ;  "  within  each  twelve  "  law- 
men "  administered  Danish  law,  while  a  common  justice- 
court  existed  for  the  whole  confederacy.  In  her  attack  upon 
this  powerful  league^Ethelflsed  abandoned  the  old  strategy  of 
battle  and  raid  for  that  of  siege  and  fortress-building.  Ad- 
vancing along  the  line  of  Trent,  she  fortified  Tamworth  and 
Stafford  on  its  head-waters,  then  turning  southward  secured 
the  valley  of  the  Avon  by  a  fort  at  Warwick.  With  the  lines 
of  the  great  rivers  alike  secure,  and  the  approaches  to  Wales 
on  either  side  of  Arden  in  her  hands,  she  in  917  closed  on 
Derby.  The  raids  of  the  Danes  of  Middle-England  failed  to 
draw  the  Lady  of  Mercia  from  her  prey  ;  and  Derby  was 
hardly  her  own  when,  turning  southward,  she  forced  the 
surrender  of  Leicester. 


THE   WEST-SAXUN    REALM.      893   TO    1013.  09 

JSthelfljed  died  in  the  midst  of  her  triumphs,  and  Eadward 
at  once  annexed  Mercia  to  Wessex.  The  brilliancy  of  her 
exploits  had  already  been  matched  by  his  own  ^essex  and 
successes  as  he  closed  in  on  the  district  of  the  Five  the  Dane- 
Boroughs  from  the  south.  South  of  the  Middle-  law- 
English  and  the  Fens  lay  a  tract  watered  by  the  Ouse  and 
the  Nen — originally  the  district  of  a  tribe  known  as  the 
South-English,  and  now,  like  the  Five  Boroughs  of  the 
north,  grouped  round  the  towns  of  Bedford,  Huntingdon, 
and  Northampton.  The  reduction  of  these  was  followed  by 
that  of  East  Anglia  ;  the  Danes  of  the  Fens  submitted  with 
Stamford,  the  Southumbrians  with  Nottingham.  Lincoln, 
the  last  of  the  Five  Boroughs  as  yet  unconquered,  no  doubt 
submitted  at  the  same  time.  From  Mid-Britain  the  king 
advanced  cautiously  to  an  attack  on  Northumbria.  He  had 
already  seized  Manchester,  and  was  preparing  to  complete 
his  conquests,  when  the  whole  of  the  north  suddenly  laid 
itself  at  his  feet.  Not  merely  Northumbria  but  the  Scots 
and  the  Britons  of  Strathclyde  "  chose  him  to  father  and 
lord/'  The  submission  had  probably  been  brought  about, 
like  that  of  the  North- Welsh  to  ^Elfred,  by  the  pressure  of 
mutual  feuds,  and  it  was  as  valueless  as  theirs.  Within  a 
year  after  Eadward's  death  the  north  was  again  on  fire. 
^Ethelstan,  Alfred's  golden-haired  grandson  whom  the  king 
had  girded  as  a  child  with  a  sword  set  in  a  golden  scabbard 
and  a  gem-studded  belt,  incorporated  Northumbria  with  his 
dominions  ;  then  turning  westward  broke  a  league  which 
had  been  formed  between  the  North-Welsh,  and  the  Scots, 
forced  them  to  pay  annual  tribute,  to  march  in  his  armies, 
and  to  attend  his  councils.  The  West- Welsh  of  Cornwall 
were  reduced  to  a  like  vassalage,  and  the  Britons  driven  from 
Exeter,  which  they  had  shared  till  then  with  its  English  in- 
habitants. A  league  of  the  Scot  king,  Constantine,  with  the 
Irish  Ostmen  was  punished  by  an  army  which  wasted  his 
kingdom,  while  a  fleet  ravaged  its  coast.  But  the  revolt  only 
heralded  the  formidable  confederacy  in  which  Scotland, 
Cumberland,  and  the  British  and  Danish  chiefs  of  the  west 
and  east  rose  at  the  appearance  of  the  fleet  of  Olaf  in  the 
Humber.  The  king's  victory  at  Brunanburh,  sung  in  no- 
blest war-song,  seemed  the  wreck  of  Danish  hopes,  but  the 
work  of  conquest  was  still  to  be  done.  On  JEthelstan's  death 


70  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

and  the  accession  of  his  young  brother  Eadmund,  the 
Danelaw  rose  again  in  revolt ;  the  men  of  the  Five  Boroughs 
joined  their  kinsmen  in  Northumbria,  and  a  peace  which  was 
negotiated  by  the  two  archbishops,  Odo  and  Wulfstan,  prac- 
tically restored  the  old  balance  of  Alfred's  day,  and  re-estab- 
lished Watling  Street  as  the  boundary  betwen  Wessex  and  the 
Danes.  Eadmund  however  possessed  the  political  and  mili- 
tary ability  of  his  house.  The  Danelaw  was  once  more  reduced 
to  submission  ;  he  seized  on  an  alliance  with  the  Scots  as  a 
balance  to  the  Danes,  and  secured  the  aid  of  their  king  by 
investing  him  with  the  fief  of  Cumberland.  But  his  triumphs 
were  suddenly  cut  short  by  his  death.  As  the  king  feasted 
at  Pucklechurch  a  robber,  Leofa,  whom  he  had  banished, 
seated  himself  at  the  royal  board,  and  drew  his  sword  on  the 
cupbearer  who  bade  him  retire.  Eadmund,  springing  to 'his 
thegn's  aid,  seized  the  robber  by  his  hair  and  flung  him  to 
the  ground,  but  Leofa  had  stabbed  the  king  ere  rescue  could 
arrive. 

The  completion  of  the  West-Saxon  realm  was  in  fact  re- 
served for  the  hands,  not  of  a  king  or  Avarrior,  but  of  a  priest. 

With  the  death  of  Eadmund  a  new  figure  comes 
Dunstan.     to  the  front  in  English  affairs.     Dunstan  stands 

first  in  the  line  of  ecclesiastical  statesmen  who 
counted  among  them  Lanfranc  and  Wolsey,  and  ended  in 
Laud.  He  is  still  more  remarkable  in  himself,  in  his  own 
vivid  personality  after  nine  centuries  of  revolution  and  change. 
He  was  born  in  the  little  hamlet  of  Glastonbury,  beside  Lie's 
church  ;  his  father,  Heorstan,  was  a  man  of  wealth  and 
kinsman  of  three  bishops  of  the  time  and  of  many  thegns  of 
the  court.  It  must  have  been  in  his  father's  hall  that  the 
fair  diminutive  boy,  with  his  scant  but  beautiful  hair,  caught 
his  love  for  "  the  vain  songs  of  ancient  heathendom,  the 
trifling  legends,  the  funeral  chants,"  which  afterwards 
roused  against  him  the  charge  of  sorcery.  Thence  too  he 
may  have  derived  his  passionate  love  of  music,  and  his  cus- 
tom of  carrying  his  harp  in  hand  on  journey  or  visit.  The 
wandering  scholars  of  Ireland  left  their  books  in  the  mon- 
astery of  Glastonbury,  as  they  left  them  along  the  Rhine  and 
the  Danube  ;  and  Dunstan  plunged  into  the  study  of  sacred 
and  profane  letters  till  his  brain  broke  down  in  delirium. 
His  knowledge  became  famous  in  the  neighborhood  and 


THK    \VEST-SAXON   REALM.      893   TO   1018.  71 

reached  the  court  of  ^Ethelstan,  but  his  appearance  there 
was  the  signal  for  a  burst  of  ill-will  among  the  courtiers, 
though  many  of  them  were  kinsmen  of  his  own,  and  he  was 
forced  to  withdraw.  Even  when  Eadmund  recalled  him  to 
the  court,  his  rivals  drove  him  from  the  king's  train,  threw 
him  from  his  horse  as  he  passed  through  the  marshes,  and 
with  the  wild  passion  of  their  age,  trampled  him  underfoot 
in  the  mire.  The  outrage  ended  in  fever,  and  in  the  bitter- 
ness of  his  disappointment  and  shame  Dunstan  rose  from  his 
sick  bed  a  monk.  But  in  England  at  this  time  the  monastic 
profession  seems  to  have  been  little  more  than  a  vow  of 
celibacy,  and  his  devotion  took  no  ascetic  turn.  His  nature 
was  sunny,  versatile,  artistic,  full  of  strong  affections  and 
capable  of  inspiring  others  with  affections  as  strong.  Quick- 
witted, of  tenacious  memory,  a  ready  and  fluent  speaker, 
gay  and  genial  in  address,  an  artist,  a  musician,  he  was  at 
the  same  time  an  indefatigable  Avorker,  busy  at  books  at 
building,  at  handicraft.  Throughout  his  life  he  won  the 
love  of  women  ;  he  now  became  the  spiritual  guide-  of  a 
woman  of  high  rank,  who  lived  only  for  charity  and  the  en- 
tertainment of  pilgrims.  "  He  ever  clave  to  her,  and  loved 
her  in  wondrous  fashion."  His  sphere  of  activity  widened  as 
the  wealth  of  his  devotee  was  placed  unreservedly  at  his  com- 
mand ;  we  see  him  followed  by  a  train  of  pupils,  busy  with 
literature,  writing,  harping,  painting,  designing.  One  morn- 
ing a  lady  summons  him  to  her  house  to  design  a  robe  which 
she  is  embroidering.  As  he  bends  with  her  maidens  over 
their  toil,  his  harp  hung  upon  the  wall  sounds  without  mor- 
tal touch  tones  which  the  startled  ears  around  frame  into  a 
joyous  antiphon.  The  tie  which  bound  him  to  this  scholar- 
life  was  broken  by  the  death  of  his  patroness ;  and  towards 
the  close  of  Eadmund's  reign  Dunstan  was  again  called  to 
the  court.  But  the  old  jealousies  revived,  and  counting  the 
game  lost  he  prepared  again  to  withdraw.  The  king  had 
spent  the  day  in  the  chase  ;  the  red  deer  which  he  was  pur- 
suing dashed  over  Cheddar  cliffs,  and  his  horse  only  checked 
itself  on  the  brink  of  the  ravine  while  Eadmund  in  the  bitter- 
ness of  death  was  repenting  of  his  injustice  to  Dunstan.  He 
was  at  once  summoned  on  the  king's  return.  "Saddle 
your  horse,"  said  Eadmund,  "  and  ride  with  me  ! "  The 
royal  train  swept  over  the  marshes  to  Dunstan's  home  ;  and 


72  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

greeting  him  with  the  kiss  of  peace,  the  king  seated  him  in 
the  priestly  chair  as  Abbot  of  Glastonbury. 

From  that  moment  Dunstan  may  have  exercised  influence 
on  public  affairs  ;  but  it  was  not  till  the  accession  of  Eadred, 
Dunstan's  Eadmund's  brother,  that  his  influence  became 
Administra-  supreme  as  leading  counselor  of  the  crown.  We 
tion>  may  trace  his  hand  in  the  solemn  proclamation 
of  the  king's  crowning.  Eadred's  election  was  the  first 
national  election  where  Briton,  Dane,  and  Englishman 
were  alike  represented  ;  his  coronation  was  the  first  national 
coronation,  the  first  union  of  the  primate  of  the  north  and 
the  primate  of  the  south  in  setting  the  crown  on  the  head  of 
one  who  was  to  rule  from  the  Forth  to  the  Channel.  A 
revolt  of  the  north  two  years  later  was  subdued  ;  at  the  out- 
break of  a  fresh  rising  the  Archbishop  of  York,  Wulfstan, 
was  thrown  into  prison  ;  and  with  the  submission  of  the 
Danelaw  in  954  the  long  work  of  Alfred's  house  was  done. 
Dogged  as  his  fight  had  been,  the  Dane  at  last  owned  him- 
self beaten.  From  the  moment  of  Eadred's  final  triumph 
all  resistance  came  to  an  end.  The  north  was  finally  brought 
into  the  general  organization  of  the  English  realm,  and  the 
Northumbrian  under-kingdom  sank  into  an  earldom  under 
Oswulf.  The  new  might  of  the  royal  power  was  expressed 
in  the  lofty  titles  assumed  by  Eadred  ;  he  was  not  only 
' '  King  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,"  but  ' '  Caesar  of  the  whole  of 
Britain." 

The  death  of  Eadred  however  was  a  signal  for  the  out- 
break of  political  strife.  The  boy-king  Eadwig  was  swayed 
by  a  woman  of  high  lineage,  ^thelgifu  ;  and  the 
(luarrel  between  her  and  the  older  counselors  of 
Eadred  broke  into  open  strife  at  the  coronation 
feast.  On  the  young  king's  insolent  withdrawal  to  her 
chamber  Dunstan,  at  the  bidding  of  the  Witan,  drew  him 
roughly  back  to  the  hall.  But  before  the  year  was  over 
the  wrath  of  the  boy-king  drove  the  abbot  over  sea,  and  his 
whole  system  went  with  him.  The  triumph  of  ^Ethelgifu 
was  crowned  in  957  by  the  marriage  of  her  daughter  to  the 
king.  The  marriage  was  uncanonical,  and  at  the  opening  of 
958  Archbishop  Odo  parted  the  king  from  his  wife  by  solemn 
sentence  ;  while  the  Mercians  and  Northumbrians  rose  in 
revolt,  proclaimed  Eadwig's  brother  Eadgar  their  king,  and 


THE    WEST-SAXON   REALM.      893   TO   1013.  73 

recalled  Dunstan,  who  received  successively  the  sees  of 
Worcester  and  of  London.  The  death  of  Eadwig  restored 
the  unity  of  the  realm.  Wessex  submitted  to  the  king  who 
had  been  already  accepted  by  the  north,  and  Dunstan,  iiow 
raised  to  the  see  of  Canterbury,  wielded  for  sixteen  years  as 
the  minister  of  Eadgar  the  secular  and  ecclesiastical  powers 
of  the  realm.  Never  had  England  seemed  so  strong  or  so 
peaceful.  Without,  a  fleet  cruising  round  the  coast  swept 
the  sea  of  pirates  ;  the  Danes  of  Ireland  had  turned  from  foes 
to  friends  ;  eight  vassal  kings  rowed  Eadgar  (so  ran  the 
legend)  in  his  boat  on  the  Dee.  The  settlement  of  the  north 
indicated  the  large  and  statesmanlike  course  which  Dunstan 
was  to  pursue  in  the  general  administration  of  the  realm. 
He  seems  to  have  adopted  from  the  beginning  a  national 
rather  than  a  West-Saxon  policy.  The  later  charge  against 
his  rule,  that  he  gave  too  much  power  to  the  Dane  and  too 
much  love  to  strangers,  is  the  best  proof  of  the  unprovincial 
temper  of  his  administration.  He  employed  Danes  in  the 
royal  service  and  promoted  them  to  high  posts  in  Church 
and  State.  In  the  code  which  he  promulgated  he  expressly 
reserved  to  the  north  its  old  Danish  rights,  "  with  as  good 
laws  as  they  best  might  choose."  His  stern  hand  restored 
justice  and  order,  while  his  care  for  commerce  was  shown  in 
the  laws  which  regulated  the  coinage  and  the  enactments  of 
common  weights  and  measures  for  the  realm.  Thanet  was 
ravaged  when  the  wreckers  of  its  coast  plundered  a  trading 
ship  from  York.  Commerce  sprang  into  a  wider  life. 
"Men  of  the  Empire,''  traders  of  Lower  Lorraine  and  the 
Rhine-land,  "  men  of  Rouen,"  were  seen  in  the  streets  of 
London,  and  it  was  by  the  foreign  trade  which  spr^ig  up  in 
Dunstan's  time  that  London  rose  to  the  commercial  greatness 
it  has  held  ever  since.  But  the  aims  of  the  primate-minister 
reached  beyond  this  outer  revival  of  prosperity  and  good 
government.  The  Danish  wars  had  dealt  rudely  with  ^Elfred's 
hopes  ;  his  cilncational  movement  had  ceased  with  his  death, 
the  clergy  had  sunk  back  into  worldliness  and  ignorance, 
not  a  single  book  or  translation  had  been  added  to  those 
which  the  king  had  left.  Dunstan  resumed  the  task,  if  not 
in  the  larger  spirit  of  Alfred,  at  least  in  the  spirit  of  a  great 
administrator.  The  reform  of  monasticism  which  had  be- 
gun in  the  abbey  of  Cluny  was  stirring  the  zeal  of  English 


74  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

churchmen,  and  Eadgar  showed  himself  zealous  in  the  cause 
of  introducing  it  into  England.  With  his  support,  JiSthel- 
wold,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  carried  the  new  Benedictinism 
into  his  diocese,  and  a  few  years  later  Oswald,  Bishop  of 
Worcester,  brought  monks  into  his  own  cathedral  city. 
Tradition  ascribed  to  Eadgar  the  formation  of  forty  monas- 
teries, and  it  was  to  his  time  that  English  monasticism 
looked  back  in  later  days  as  the  beginning  of  its  contin- 
uous life.  But  after  all  his  efforts,  monasteries  were  in  fact 
only  firmly  planted  in  Wessex  and  East  Anglia,  and  the 
system  took  no  hold  in  Xorthumbria  or  in  the  bulk  of  Mercia. 
Dunstan  himself  took  little  part  in  it,  though  his  influence 
was  strongly  felt  in  the  literary  revival  which  accompanied 
the  revival  of  religious  activity.  He  himself  while  abbot  was 
famous  as  a  teacher.  His  great  assistant  vEthelwold  raised 
Abiugdou  into  a  school  second  only  to  Glastonbury.  His 
other  great  helper,  Oswald,  laid  the  first  foundations  of 
the  historic  school  of  Worcester.  Abbo,  the  most  notable 
scholar  in  Gaul,  came  from  Fleury  at  the  primate's  invitation. 
'After  times  looked  back  fondly  to  "  Eadgar  s  Law,"  as  it 
was  called,  in  other  words  to  the  English  Constitution  as  it 

shaped  itself  in  the  hands  of  Eadgar's  minister. 
°f  ^  number  of  influences  had  greatly  modified  the 

older  order  which  had  followed  on  the  English 
conquest.  Slavery  was  gradually  disappearing  before  the 
efforts  of  the  Church.  Theodore  had  denied  Christian 
burial  to  the  kidnapper,  and  prohibited  the  sale  of  children 
by  their  parents,  after  the  age  of  seven.  Ecgberht  of  York 
punished  any  sale  of  child  or  kinsfolk  with  excommunica- 
tion. Tte  murder  of  a  slave  by  lord  or  mistress,  though  no 
crime  in  the  eye  of  the  State,  became  a  sin  for  which  penance 
was  due  to  the  Church.  The  slave  was  exempted  from  toil 
on  Sundays  and  holydays  ;  here  and  there  he  became  attached 
to  the  soil  and  could  only  be  sold  with  it  ;  sometimes  he  ac- 
quired a  plot  of  ground,  and  was  suffered  to  purchase  his 
own  release.  ^Ethelstan  gave  the  slave-class  a  new  rank  in 
the  realm  by  extending  to  it  the  same  principles  of  mutual 
responsibility  for  crime  which  were  the  basis  of  order  among 
the  free.  The  Church  was  far  from  contenting  herself  with 
this  gradual  elevation  ;  Wilfrid  led  the  way  in  the  work  of 
emancipation  by  freeing  two  hundred  and  fifty  serfs  whom 


THE   WEST-SAXON   REALM.      893   TO   1013.  75 

he  found  attached  to  his  estate  at  Selsey.  Manumission 
became  frequent  in  wills,  as  the  clergy  taught  that  such  a 
gift  was  a  boon  to  the  soul  of  the  dead.  At  the  Synod  of 
Chelsea  the  bishops  bound  themselves  to  free  at  their  decease 
all  serfs  on  their  estates  who  bad  been  reduced  to  serfdom 
by  want  or  crime.  Usually  the  slave  was  set  free  before  the 
altar  or  in  the  church-porch,  and  the  Gospel-book  bore 
written  on  its  margins  the  record  of  his  emancipation. 
Sometimes  his  lord  placed  him  at  the  spot  where  four  roads 
met,  and  bade  him  go  whither  he  would.  In  the  more  solemn 
form  of  the  law  his  master  took  him  by  the  hand  in  full  shire- 
meeting,  showed  him  open  road  and  door,  and  gave  him  the 
lance  and  sword  of  the  freeman.  The  slave-trade  from 
English  ports  was  prohibited  by  law,  but  the  prohibition 
long  remained  ineffective.  A  hundred  years  later  than 
Dunstan  the  wealth  of  English  nobles  was  said  sometimes  to 
spring  from  breeding  slaves  for  the  market.  It  was  not  till 
the  reign  of  the  first  Norman  king  that  the  preaching  of 
Wulfstan  and  the  influence  of  Lanfranc  suppressed  the  trade 
in  its  last  stronghold,  the  port  of  Bristol. 

But  the  decrease  of  slavery  went  on  side  by  side  with  an 
increasing  degradation  of  the  bulk  of  the  people.  Political 
and  social  changes  had  long  been  modifying  the  The  later 
whole  structure  of  society  ;  and  the  very  founda-  English 
tions  of  the  old  order  were  broken  up  in  the  Kingdom, 
degradation  of  the  freeman,  and  the  upgrowth  of  the  lord 
with  his  dependent  villeins.  The  political  changes  which 
were  annihilating  the  older  English  liberty  were  in  great 
measure  due  to  a  change  in  the  character  of  English  king- 
ship. As  the  lesser  English  kingdoms  had  drawn  together, 
the  wider  dominion  of  the  king  had  removed  him  further 
and  further  from  his  people,  and  clothed  him  with  a 
mysterious  dignity.  Every  reign  raised  him  higher  in  the 
social  scale.  The  bishop,  once  ranked  his  equal  in  value  of 
life,  sank  to  tho  level  of  the  ealdorman.  The  ealdorman 
himself,  once  the  hereditary  ruler  of  a  smaller  state,  became 
a  mere  delegate  of  the  king,  with  an  authority  curtailed  in 
every  shire  by  that  of  the  royal  reeves — officers  despatched  to 
levy  the  royal  revenues  and  administer  the  royal  justice. 
Religion  deepened  the  sense  of  awe.  The  king,  if  he  was  no 
longer  sacred  as  the  son  of  Woden,  was  yet  more  sacred  aa 


76        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

"the  Lord's  Anointed;"  and  treason  against  him  became 
the  worst  of  crimes.  The  older  nobility  of  blood  died  out 
before  the  new  nobility  of  the  court.  From  the  oldest  times 
of  Germanic  history  each  chief  or  king  had  his  war-band,  his 
comrades,  warriors  bound  personally  to  him  by  their  free 
choice,  sworn  to  fight  for  him  to  the  death,  and  avenge  his 
cause  as  their  own.  When  Cynewulf  of  Wessex  was  foully  slain 
at  Merton  his  comrades  "  ran  at  once  to  the  spot,  each  as  he 
was  ready  and  as  fast  as  he  could,"  and  despising  all  offers 
of  life,  fell  fighting  over  the  corpse  of  their  lord.  The  fidel- 
ity of  the  war-band  was  rewarded  with  grants  from  the 
royal  domain  ;  the  king  became  their  lord  or  hlaford,  "  the 
dispenser  of  gifts  ; "  the  comrade  became  his  "  servant  "  or 
thegn.  Personal  service  at  his  court  was  held  not  to  de- 
grade but  to  ennoble.  "  Cup-thegn,"  and  "  horse-thegn," 
and  "  borders;"  or  treasurer,  became  great  officers  of  state. 
The  thegn  advanced  with  the  advance  of  the  king.  He  ab- 
sorbed every  post  of  honor  ;  he  became  ealdorman,  reeve, 
bishop,  judge  ;  while  his  wealth  increased  as  the  common 
folkland  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  king,  and  was  carved 
out  by  him  into  estates  for  his  dependents. 

The  principle  of  personal  allegiance  embodied  in  the  new 
nobility  tended  to  widen  into  a  theory  of  general  dependence. 
Decline  of  From  Alfred's  day  it  was  assumed  that  no  man 
the  English  could  exist  without  a  lord.  The  ravages  and  the 
Freeman.  iong  inscurity  of  the  Danish  wars  aided  to  drive 
the  free  farmer  to  seek  protection  from  the  thegn.  His 
freehold  was  surrendered  to  be  received  back  as  a  fief, 
laden  with  service  to  its  lord.  Gradually  the  "  lordless  man  " 
became  a  sort  of  outlaw  in  the  realm.  The  free  churl  sank 
into  the  villein,  and  changed  from  the  freeholder  who  knew 
no  (superior  but  God  and  the  law,  to  the  tenant  bound  to  do 
service  to  his  lord,  to  follow  him  to  the  field,  to  look  to  his 
court  for  justice,  and  render  days  of  service  in  his  demesne. 
While  he  lost  his  older  freedom  he  gradually  lost,  too,  his 
share  in  the  government  of  the  state.  The  life  of  the  earlier 
English  state  was  gathered  up  in  its  folk-moot.  There, 
through  its  representatives  chosen  in  every  hundred-moot, 
the  folk  had  exercised  its  own  sovereignty  in  matters  of 
justice  as  of  peace  and  war  ;  while  beside  the  folk-moot,  and 
acting  with  it,  had  stood  the  Witenagemot,  the  group  of 


THE   WEST-SAXON   REALM.      893   TO   1013.  77 

tf  wise  men  "  gathered  to  give  rede  to  the  king  and  through 
him  to  propose  a  course  of  action  to  the  folk.  The  prelimi- 
nary discussion  rested  with  the  nobler  sort,  the  final  decision 
with  all.  The  clash  of  arms,  the  "  Yea"  or  "  Nay"  of  the 
crowd,  were  its  vote.  But  when  by  the  union  of  the  lesser 
realms  the  folk  sank  into  a  portion  of  a  wider  state,  the  folk- 
moot  sank  with  it ;  political  supremacy  passed  to  the  court  of 
the  far-off  lord,  and  the  influence  of  the  people  on  government 
came  to  an  end.  Nobles  indeed  could  still  gather  round  the 
king  ;  and  while  the  folk-moot  passes  out  of  political  notice, 
the  Witenagemot  is  heard  of  more  and  more  as  a  royal  council. 
It  shared  in  the  higher  justice,  the  imposition  of  taxes, 
the  making  of  laws,  the  conclusion  of  treaties,  the  control  of 
war,  the  disposal  of  public  lands,  the  appointment  of  great 
officers  of  state.  There  were  times  when  it  even  claimed  to 
elect  or  depose  the  king.  But  with  these  powers  the  bulk  of 
the  nobles  had  really  less  and  less  to  do.  The  larger  the 
kingdom  the  greater  grew  the  distance  from  their  homes  ; 
and  their  share  in  the  general  deliberations  of  the  realm 
dwindled  to  nothing.  Practically  the  national  council  shrank 
into  a  gathering  of  the  great  officers  of  Church  and  State 
with  the  royal  thegns,  and  the  old  English  democracy  passed 
into  an  obligarchy  of  the  closest  kind.  The  only  relic  of  the 
popular  character  of  English  government  lay  at  last  in  the 
ring  of  citizens  who  at  London  or  Winchester  gathered 
round  the  wise  men  and  shouted  their  "Aye"  or  "Nay"  at 
the  election  of  a  king. 

It  is  in  the  degradation  of  the  class  in  which  its  true  strength 
lay  that  we  must  look  for  the  cause  of  the  ruin  which  already 
hung  over  the  West-Saxon  realm.     Eadgar  was  but  FaU  of  tj,e 
thirty-two  when  he  died  in  975  ;  and  the  children  West-Saxon 
he  left  were  mere  boys.     His  death  opened  the    Kingdom- 
way  for  bitter  political  strife  among  the  nobles  of  his  court, 
whose    quarrel  took   the  form  of  a  dispute  over  the   suc- 
cession.    Civil  war  was,  in  fact,  only  averted  by  the  energy 
of  the  primate  ;  seizing  his  cross,  he  settled   the  question  of 
Eadgar's  successor  by  the  coronation  of  his  son  Eaclward,  and 
confronted  his  enemies  successfully  in  two  assemblies  of  the 
Wise  Men.     In  that  of  Calne  the  floor  of  the  room  gave  way, 
and  according  to  monkish  tradition  Dunstan  and  his  friends 
alone  remained  unhurt.     But  not  even  the  fame  of  a  miracle 


78  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

sufficed  to  turn  the  tide.  The  assassination  of  Eadward  was 
followed  by  the  triumph  of  Dunstan's  opponents,  who  broke 
out  in  "great  joy"  at  the  coronation  of  Eadward's  brother 
^Ethelred,  a  child  of  ten  years  old.  The  government  of  the 
realm  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  great  nobles  who  upheld 
^Ethelred,  and  Dunstan  withdrew  powerless  to  Canterbury, 
where  he  died  nine  years  later. 

During  the  eleven  years  from  979  to  990,  when  the  young 
king  reached  manhood,  there  is  scarcely  any  internal  history 
to  record.  New  danger  however  threatened  from  abroad. 
The  north  was  girding  itself  for  a  fresh  onset  on  England. 
The  Scandinavian  peoples  had  drawn  together  into  their  king- 
doms of  Denmark,  Sweden,  and  Norway  ;  and  it  was  no 
longer  in  isolated  bands  but  in  national  hosts  that  they  were 
about  to  seek  conquests  in  the  south.  The  seas  were  again 
thronged  with  northern  freebooters,  and  pirate  fleets,  as  of 
old,  appeared  on  the  English  coast.  In  991  came  the  first 
burst  of  the  storm,  when  a  body  of  Norwegian  wikings 
landed,  and  utterly  defeated  the  host  of  East  Anglia  on  the 
field  of  Maldon.  In  the  next  year  ^Ethelred  was  forced  to 
buy  a  truce  from  the  invaders  and  to  suffer  them  to  settle  in 
the  land  ;  while  he  strengthened  himself  by  a  treaty  of  alli- 
ance with  Normandy,  which  was  now  growing  into  a  great 
power  over  sea.  A  fresh  attempt  to  expel  the  invaders  only 
proved  the  signal  for  the  gathering  of  pirate-hosts  such  as 
England  had  never  seen  before,  under  Swein  and  Olaf, 
claimants  to  the  Danish  and  Norwegian  thrones.  Their 
withdrawal  in  995  was  followed  by  fresh  attacks  in  997  ; 
danger  threatened  from  Normans  and  from  Ost-men,  with 
wikings  from  Man,  and  northmen  from  Cumberland  ;  while 
the  utter  weakness  of  the  realm  Avas  shown  by  ^Ethelred's 
taking  into  his  service  Danish  mercenaries,  who  seem  to  have 
been  quartered  through  Wessex  as  a  defense  against  their 
brethren.  Threatened  with  a  new  attack  by  Swein,  who  was 
now  king,  not  only  of  Denmark,  but  by  the  defeat  and  death 
of  Olaf,  of  Norway  itself,  ^Ethelred  bound  Normandy  to  his 
side  by  a  marriage  with  its  duke's  sister  Emma.  But  a  sud- 
den panic  betrayed  him  into  an  act  of  basest  treachery  which 
ruined  his  plans  of  defense  at  home.  Urged  by  secret  orders 
from  the  king,  the  West-Saxons  rose  on  St.  Brice's  day  and 
pitilessly  massacred  the  Danes  scattered  among  them.  Gun- 


THE   WEST-SAXON   REALM.      892   TO   1013.  79 

hilcl,  the  sister  of  their  king  Swein,  a  Christian  convert,  and 
one  of  the  hostages  for  the  peace,  saw  husband  and  child 
butchered  before  her  eyes  ere  she  fell  threatening  vengeance 
on  her  murderers.  Swein  swore  at  the  news  to  wrest  Eng- 
land from  ^E  th  el  red.  For  four  years  he  marched  through 
the  length  and  breadth  of  southern  and  eastern  England, 
"  lighting  his  war-beacons  as  he  went"  in  blazing  homestead 
and  town.  Then  for  a  heavy  bribe  he  withdrew,  to  prepare 
for  a  later  and  more  terrible  onset.  But  there  was  no  rest  for 
the  realm.  The  fiercest  of  the  Norwegian  jarls  took  his 
place,  and  from  Wessex  the  war  extended  over  East  Anglia 
and  Mercia.  Canterbury  was  taken  and  sacked,  ^Elfheah  the 
Archbishop  dragged  to  Greenwich,  and  there  in  default  of 
ransom  brutally  slain.  The  Danes  set  him  in  the  midst  of 
their  husting,  pelting  him  with  stones  and  ox-horns,  till  one 
more  pitiful  than  the  rest  clave  his  skull  with  an  ax. 

But  a  yet  more  terrible  attack  was  preparing  under  Swein 
in  the  North,  and  in  1013  his  fleet  entered  the  Humber,  and 
called  on  the  Danelaw  to  rise  in  his  aid.  Northumbria,  East 
Anglia,  the  Five  Boroughs,  all  England  north  of  Watling 
Street,  submitted  to  him  at  Gainsborough.  ^Ethelred  shrank 
into  a  King  of  Wessex,  and  of  a  Wessex  helpless  before  the 
foe.  Resistance  was  impossible.  The  war  was  terrible  but 
short.  Everywhere  the  country  was  pitilessly  harried, 
churches  plundered,  men  slaughtered.  But  with  the  one  ex- 
ception of  London,  there  was  no  attempt  at  defense.  Oxford 
and  Winchester  flung  open  their  gates.  The  thegns  of  Wes- 
sex submitted  to  the  northmen  at  Bath.  Even  London  was 
forced  at  last  to  give  way,  and  ^Ethelred  fled  over  sea  to  a 
refuge  in  Normandy.  With  the  flight  of  the  king  ended  the 
long  struggle  of  Wessex  for  supremacy  over  Britain.  The 
task  which  had  baffled  the  energies  of  Eadwine  andOffa,  and 
had  proved  too  hard  for  the  valor  of  Eadward  and  the 
statesmanship  of  Dnnstan,  the  task  of  uniting  England 
finally  into  a  single  nation,  was  now  to  pass  to  other  hands, 


80  HISTOB.Y   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 


CHAPTER  II. 
ENGLAND  UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS. 

1013—1304. 
Section  I. — The  Danish  Kings. 

[Authorities.— We  are  still  aided  by  the  collections  of  royal  laws  and  charters. 
The  English  Chronicle  is  here  of  great  importance  ;  its  various  copies  differ  much 
in  tone,  etc.,  from  one  another,  and  may  to  some  extent  be  regarded  as  distinct 
works.  Florence  of  Worcester  is  probably  the  translator  of  a  valuable  copy  of 
the  Chronicle  which  has  disappeared.  For  the  reign  of  Cnut  see  Green's  "  Conquest 
of  England."  The  authority  of  the  contemporary  biographer  of  Eadward  (in 
Luard's  "  Lives  of  Eadward  the  Confessor,"  published  by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls, 
is  "primary,"  says  Mr.  Freeman,  "for  all  matters  strictly  personal  to  the  King 
and  the  whole  family  of  Godwine.  He  is,  however,  very  distinctly  not  an  historian, 
but  a  biographer,  sometimes  a  laureate."  All  modern  accounts  of  this  reign  have 
been  superseded  by  the  elaborate  history  of  Mr.  Freeman  ("  Norman  Conquest," 
vol.  ii.)  For  the  Danish  kings  and  the  House  of  Godwine,  see  the  "  Conquest  of 
England,"  by  Mr.  Green.] 

BRITAIN  had  become  England  in  the  five  hundred  years 
that  followed  the  landing  of  Hengest,  and  its  conquest 

had  ended  in  the  settlement  of  its  conquerors,  in 
Ther*£eig11  their  conversion  to  Christianity,  in  the  birth  of 

a  national  literature,  of  an  imperfect  civilization, 
of  a  rough  political  order.  But  through  the  whole  of  this 
earlier  age  every  attempt  to  fuse  the  various  tribes  of  con- 
querors into  a  single  nation  had  failed.  The  effort  of  North- 
umbria  to  extend  her  rule  over  all  England  had  been  foiled 
by  the  resistance  of  Merica  ;  that  of  Mercia  by  the  resistance 
of  Wessex.  Wessex  herself,  even  under  the  guidance  of  great 
kings  and  statesmen,  had  no  sooner  reduced  the  country  to 
a  seeming  unity  than  local  independence  rose  again  at  the 
call  of  the  Danes.  The  tide  of  supremacy  rolled  in  fact  back- 
wards and  forwards ;  now  the  South  won  lordship  over  the 
North,  now  the  North  won  lordship  over  the  South.  But 
whatever  titles  kings  might  assume,  or  however  imposing 
their  rule  might  appear,  Northumbrian  remained  apart  from 
West-Saxon,  Dane  from  Englishman.  A  common  national 


THE   DANISH   KINGS.      1013   TO   1042.  81 

sympathy   held  the   country    roughly    together,  but   a  real 
national  union  had  yet  to  come. 

Through  the  two  hundred  years  that  lie  between  the  flight 
of  ^Ethelred  from  England  to  Normandy  and  that  of  John 
from  Normandy  to  England  our  story  is  a  story  of  foreign 
rule.  Kings  from  Denmark  were  succeeded  by  kings  from 
Normandy,  and  these  by  kings  from  Anjou.  Under  Dane, 
Norman,  or  Angevin,  Englishmen  were  a  subject  race,  con- 
quered and  ruled  by  foreign  masters  ;  and  yet  it  was  in  these 
years  of  subjection  that  England  first  became  really  England. 
Provincial  differences  were  crushed  into  national  unity  by 
the  pressure  of  the  stranger.  The  same  pressure  redressed 
the  wrong  which  had  been  done  to  the  fabric  of  national 
society  by  the  degradation  of  the  free  landowner  at  the  close 
of  the  preceding  age  into  a  feudal  dependent  on  his  lord. 
The  English  lords  themselves  sank  into  a  middle  class  as 
they  were  pushed  from  their  place  by  the  foreign  baronage 
who  settled  on  English  soil ;  and  this  change  was  accom- 
panied by  a  gradual  elevation  of  the  class  of  servile  and  semi- 
servile  cultivators  which  gradually  lifted  them  into  almost 
complete  freedom.  The  middle-class  which  was  thus  created 
was  reinforced  by  the  up-growth  of  a  corresponding  class  in 
our  towns.  Commerce  and  trade  were  promoted  by  the  justice 
and  policy  of  the  foreign  kings  ;  and  with  their  advance  rose 
the  political  importance  of  the  trader.  The  boroughs  of 
England,  which  at  the  opening  of  this  period  were  for  the 
most  part  mere  villages,  were  rich  enough  at  its  close  to  buy 
liberty  from  the  Crown.  Eights  of  self-government,  of  free 
speech,  of  common  deliberation,  which  had  passed  from  the 
people  at  large  into  the  hands  of  its  nobles,  revived  in  the 
charters  and  councils  of  the  towns.  A  moral  revival  followed 
hard  on  this  political  development.  The  occupation  of  every 
see  and  abbacy  by  strangers  who  could  only  speak  to  their 
flocks  in  an  unknown  tongue  had  severed  the  higher  clergy 
from  the  lower  priesthood  and  the  people  ;  but  religion  became 
a  living  thing  as  it  passed  to  the  people  themselves,  and  her- 
mit and  friar  carried  spiritual  life  home  to  the  heart  of  the 
nation  at  large.  At  the  same  time  the  close  connection  with 
the  Continent  which  foreign  conquest  brought  about  secured 
for  England  a  new  communion  with  the  artistic  and  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  world  without  her.  The  old  mental  stag- 
6 


82  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

nation  was  broken  up,  and  art  and  literature  covered  England 
with  great  buildings  and  busy  schools.  Time  for  this  varied 
progress  was  gained  by  the  long  peace  which  England  owed 
to  the  firm  government  of  her  Kings,  while  their  political 
ability  gave  her  administrative  order,  and  their  judicial  re- 
forms built  up  the  fabric  of  her  law.  In  a  word,  it  is  to  the 
stern  discipline  of  these  two  hundred  years  that  we  owe  not 
merely  English  wealth  and  English  freedom,  but  England 
itself. 

The  first  of  our  foreign  masters  was  the  Dane.  The 
countries  of  Scandinavia  which  had  so  long  been  the  mere 
starting-points  of  the  pirate-bands  who  had 
ravaged  England  and  Ireland  had  now  settled 
down  into  comparative  order.  It  was  the  aim  of 
Swein  to  unite  them  in  a  great  Scandinavian  Empire,  of 
which  England  should  be  the  head  ;  and  this  project,  inter- 
rupted for  a  time  by  his  death,  was  resumed  with  yet  greater 
vigor  by  his  son  Cnut.  Eear  of  the  Dane  was  still  great  in 
the  land,  and  Cnut  had  no  sooner  appeared  off  the  English 
coast  than  Wessex,  Mercia,  and  Northumberland  joined  in 
owning  him  for  their  lord,  and  in  discarding  again  the  rule 
of  j3Hthelred,  who  had  returned  on  the  death  of  Swein. 
When  ^Ethelred's  death  in  1016  raised  his  son  Eadmund 
Ironside  to  the  throne,  the  loyalty  of  London  enabled  him 
to  struggle  bravely  for  a  few  months  against  the  Danes  ;  but 
a  decisive  victory  at  Assandun  and  the  death  of  his  rival  left 
Cnut  master  of  the  realm.  Conqueror  as  he  was,  the  Dane 
was  no  foreigner  in  the  sense  that  the  Norman  was  a  foreigner 
after  him.  His  language  differed  little  from  the  English 
tongue.  He  brought  in  no  new  system  of  tenure  or  govern- 
ment. Cnut  ruled,  in  fact,  not  as  a  foreign  conqueror  but 
as  a  native  king.  The  good-will  and  tranquillity  of  England 
were  necessary  for  the  success  of  his  larger  schemes  in  the 
north,  where  the  arms  of  his  English  subjects  aided  him  in 
later  years  in  uniting  Denmark  and  Norway  beneath  his  sway. 
Dismissing  therefore  his  Danish  "host,"  and  retaining  only 
a  trained  body  of  household  troops  or  hus-carls  to  serve  in 
sudden  emergencies,  Cnut  boldly  relied  for  support  within 
his  realm  on  the  justice  and  good  government  he  secured  it. 
His  aim  during  twenty  years  seems  to  have  been  to  obliter- 
ate from  men's  minds  the  foreign  character  of  his  rule,  and 


THE    DANISH    KINGS.       1013    TO    1042.  83 

the  bloodshed  in  which  it  had  begun.  The  change  in  him- 
self was  as  startling  as  the  change  in  his  policy.  When  he 
first  appears  in  England,  it  is  as  the  mere  northman,  pas- 
sionate, revengeful,  uniting  the  guile  of  the  savage  with  his 
thirst  for  blood.  His  first  acts  of  government  were  a  series 
of  murders.  Eadric  of  Mercia,  whose  aid  had  given  him  the 
crown,  was  felled  by  an  ax-blow  at  the  King's  signal ;  a 
murder  removed  Eadwig,  the  brother  of  Eadmund  Ironside, 
while  the  children  of  Eadmund  were  hunted  even  into 
Hungary  by  his  ruthless  hate.  But  from  a  savage  such  as 
this  Cnut  rose  suddenly  into  a  wise  and  temperate  king. 
Stranger  as  he  was,  he  fell  back  on  "  Eadgar's  law,"  on  the 
old  constitution  of  the  realm,  and  owned  no  difference  be- 
tween conqueror  and  conquered,  between  Dane  and  English- 
man. By  the  creation  of  four  earldoms,  those  of  Mercia, 
Northumberland,  Wessex,  and  East  Anglia,  he  recognized 
provincial  independence,  but  he  drew  closer  than  of  old  the 
ties  which  bound  the  rulers  of  these  great  dependencies  to 
the  Crown.  He  even  identified  himself  with  the  patriotism 
which  had  withstood  the  stranger.  The  Church  had  been 
the  center  of  national  resistance  to  the  Dane,  but  Cnut  sought 
above  all  its  friendship.  He  paid  homage  to  the  cause  for 
which  ./Elfheah  had  died,  by  his  translation  of  the  Arch- 
bishop's body  to  Canterbury.  He  atoned  for  his  father's 
ravages  by  costly  gifts  to  the  religious  houses.  He  protected 
English  pilgrims  against  the  robber-lords  of  the  Alps.  His 
love  for  monks  broke  out  in  the  song  which  he  composed  as 
he  listened  to  their  chant  at  Ely  :  "  Merrily  sang  the  monks 
in  Ely  when  Cnut  King  rowed  by  "  across  the  vast  fen-waters 
that  surrounded  their  abbey.  "  Kow,  boatmen,  near  the 
land,  and  here  we  these  monks  sing." 

Cnut's  letter  from  Rome  to  his  English  subjects  marks  the 
grandeur  of  his  character  and  the  noble  conception  he  had 
formed  of  kingship.  "I  have  vowed  to  God  to  lead  a  right 
life  in  all  things,"  wrote  the  King,  "  to  rule  justly  and  piously 
my  realms  and  subjects,  and  to  administer  just  judgment  to 
all.  If  heretofore  I  have  done  aught  beyond  what  was  just, 
through  headiness  or  negligence  of  youth,  I  am 'ready  with 
God's  help  to  amend  it  utterly."  No  royal  officer,  either  for 
fear  of  the  King  or  for  favor  of  any,  is  to  consent  to  injustice, 
none  is  to  do  wrong  to  rich  or  poor  "as  they  would  value 


84        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

my  friendship  and  their  own  well-being."  He  especially 
denounces  unfair  exactions  :  "I  have  no  need  that  money  be 
heaped  together  for  me  by  unjust  demands."  "I  have  sent 
this  letter  before  me,"  Cnut  ends,  "that  all  the  people  of  my 
realm  may  rejoice  in  my  well-doing  ;  for  as  you  yourselves 
know,  never  have  I  spared  nor  will  I  spare  to  spend  myself 
and  my  toil  in  what  is  needful  and  good  for  my  people/' 

Cnut's  greatest  gift  to  his  people  was  that  of  peace.     With 
him  began  the  long  internal  tranquillity  which  was  from  this 

time  to  be  the  special  note  of  our  national  history. 
**  During  two  hundred  years,  with  the  one  terrible 

interval  of  the  Norman  Conquest,  and  the  disturb- 
ance under  Stephen,  England  alone  among  the  kingdoms  of 
Europe  enjoyed  unbroken  repose.  The  Avars  of  her  Kings 
lay  far  from  her  shores,  in  France  or  Normandy,  or,  as  with 
Cnut,  in  the  more  distant  lands  of  the  North.  The  stern 
justice  of  their  government  secured  order  within.  The 
absence  of  internal  discontent  under  Cnut,  perhaps  too  the 
exhaustion  of  the  kingdom  after  the  terrible  Danish  inroads, 
is  proved  by  its  quiet  during  his  periods  of  absence.  Every- 
thing witnesses  to  the  growing  Avealth  and  prosperity  of  the 
country.  A  great  part  of  English  soil  was  indeed  still  utterly 
uncultivated.  Wide  reaches  of  land  were  covered  with  wood, 
thicket,  and  scrub  ;  or  consisted  of  heaths  and  moor.  In 
both  the  east  and  the  west  there  were  vast  tracts  of  marsh 
land  ;  fens  nearly  one  hundred  miles  long  severed  East  Anglia 
from  the  midland  counties  ;  sites  like  that  of  Glastonbury  or 
Athelney  were  almost  inaccessible.  The  beaver  still  haunted 
marshy  hollows  such  as  those  which  lay  about  Beverley,  the 
London  craftsmen  chased  the  wild  boar  and  the  wild  ox  in 
the  woods  of  Hampstead,  while  wolves  prowled  round  the 
homesteads  of  the  North.  But  peace  and  the  industry  it 
encouraged  were  telling  on  this  waste  ;  stag  and  wolf  were 
retreating  before  the  face  of  man,  the  farmers  ux  was  ring- 
ing in  the  forest,  and  villages  were  springing  up  in  the  clear- 
ings. The  growth  of  commerce  was  seen  in  the  rich  trading- 
ports  of  the  eastern  coast.  The  main  trade  lay  probably  in 
skins  and  ropes  and  ship  masts  ;  and  above  all  in  the  iron 
and  steel  that  the  Scandinavian  lands  so  long  supplied  to 
Britain.  But  Dane  and  Norwegian  were  traders  over  a  yet 
wider  field  than  the  northern  seas ;  their  barks  entered  the 


THE   DANISH   KINGS.      1013    TO    1042.  85 

Mediterranean,  while  the  overland  route  through  Russia 
brought  the  wares  of  Constantinople  and  the  East.  "  What 
do  you  bring  to  us  ?"  the  merchant  is  asked  in  an  old  Eng- 
lish dialogue.  "I  bring  skins,  silks,  costly  gems,  and  gold," 
he  answers,  "  besides  various  garments,  pigment,  wine,  oil, 
and  ivory,  with  brass,  and  copper,  and  tin,  silver  and  gold, 
and  such  like."  Men  from  the  Rhineland  and  from  Nor- 
mandy, toor  moored  their  vessels  along  the  Thames,  on  whose 
rude  wharves  were  piled  a  strange  medley  of  goods  :  pepper 
and  spices  from  the  far  East,  crates  of  gloves  and  gray  cloths, 
it  may  be  from  the  Lombard  looms,  sacks  of  wool,  iron-work 
from  Liege,  butts  of  French  wine  and  vinegar,  and  with  them 
the  rural  products  of  the  country  itself — cheese,  butter,  lard, 
and  eggs,  with  live  swine  and  fowls. 

Cnut's  one  aim  was  to  win  the  love  of  his  people,  and  all 
tradition  shows  how  wonderful  was  his  success.  But  the 
greatness  of  his  rule  hung  solely  on  the  greatness 
of  hi3  temper,  and  at  his  death  the  empire  he  had 
built  up  at  once  fell  to  pieces.  Denmark  and 
England,  parted  for  a  few  years  by  the  accession  of  his  son 
Harald  to  the  throne  of  the  last,  were  reunited  under  a 
second  son,  Harthacnut ;  but  the  love  which  Cnut's  justice 
had  won  turned  to  hatred  before  the  lawlessness  of  his 
successors.  The  long  peace  sickened  men  of  this  fresh 
outburst  of  bloodshed  and  violence.  "  Never  was  a  bloodier 
deed  done  in  the  land  since  the  Danes  came,"  ran  the  popular 
song,  when  Harald's  men  seized  yElfred,  a  brother  of  Ead- 
mund  Ironside,  who  had  returned  to  England  from  Nor- 
mandy. Every  tenth  man  was  killed,  the  rest  sold  for 
slaves,  and  ^Elfred  himself  blinded  and  left  to  die  at  Ely. 

Harthacnut,  more  savage  even  than  his  predecessor,  dug 
up  his  brother's  body  and  flung  it  into  a  marsh  ;  while  a 
rising  at  Worcester  against  his  hus-carls  was  punished  by  the 
burning  of  the  town  and  the  pillage  of  the  shire.  His  death 
was  no  less  brutal  than  his  life  ;  "he  died  as  he  stood  at  his 
drink  in  the  house  of  Osgod  Clapa  at  Lambeth."  England 
wearied  of  kings  like  these  ;  but  their  crimes  helped  her  to 
free  herself  from  the  impossible  dream  of  Cnut.  The  North, 
still  more  barbarous  than  herself,  could  give  her  no  new  ele- 
ment of  progress  or  civilization.  It  was  the  consciousness  of 
this  and  the  hatred  of  such  rulers  as  Harald  and  Harthacnut 


86  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

which  cooperated  with  the  old  feeling  of  reverence  for  the 
past  in  calling  back  the  line  of  2Elfred  to  the  throne. 


Section  II.— The  English  Restoration,  1042 — 1066. 

It  is  in  such  transitional  moments  of  a  nation's  history  that 
it  needs  the  cool  prudence,  the  sensitive  selfishness,  the  quick 

perception  of  what  is  possible,  which  distinguished 
Godwine.  the  adroit  politician  whom  the  death  of  Cnut  left 

supreme  in  England.  Godwine  is  memorable  in  our 
history  as  the  first  English  statesman  who  was  neither  king  nor 
priest.  Originally  of  obscure  origin,  his  ability  had  raised  him 
high  in  the  royal  favor  ;  he  was  allied  to  Cnut  by  marriage, 
entrusted  by  him  with  the  earldom  of  Wessex,  and  at  last  made 
Viceroy  or  justiciar  in  the  government  of  the  realm.  In  the 
wars  of  Scandinavia  he  had  shown  courage  and  skill  at  the 
head  of  a  body  of  English  troops  who  supported  Cnut,  but 
his  true  field  of  action  lay  at  home.  Shrewd,  eloquent,  an 
active  administrator,  Godwiue  united  vigilance,  industry,  and 
caution  with  a  singular  dexterity  in  the  management  of  men. 
During  the  troubled  years  that  followed  the  death  of  Cnut  he 
had  done  his  best  to  continue  his  master's  policy  in  securing 
the  internal  union  of  England  under  a  Danish  sovereign  and  in 
preserving  her  connection  with  the  North.  But  at  the  death  of 
Harthacnut  Cnut's  policy  had  become  impossible,and  abandon- 
ing the  Danish  cause  Godwine  drifted  with  the  tide  of  popular 
feeling  which  call  Eadward,the  son  of  ^Ethelred,  to  the  throne. 
Eadward  had  lived  from  his  youth  in  exile  at  the  court  of 
Normandy.  A  halo  of  tenderness  spread  in  after-time  round 

this  last  King  of  the  old  English  stock  ;  legends 
Edward  the  to|d  of  jlig  -^  simpiicity  his  blitheness  dnd 
Confessor.  r  .  r/  .,  .  .,  ,  . 

gentleness  of  mood,  the  holiness  that  gained  him 

his  name  of  "  Confessor"  and  enshrined  him  as  a  saint  in  his 
abbey-church  at  Westminster,  ^leemen  sang  in  manlier 
tones  of  -the  long  peace  and  glories  of  his  reign,  how  warriors 
and  wise  counselors  stood  round  his  throne,  and  Welsh  and 
Scot  and  Briton  obeyed  him.  His  was  the  one  figure  that 
stood  out  bright  against  the  darkness  when  England  lay 
trodden  under  foot  by  Norman  conquerors  ;  and  so  dear  be* 
•name  his  memory  that  liberty  and  independence  itself  seemed 


THE   ENGLISH    RESTORATION.      1042   TO    10(56.         87 

incarnate  in  his  name.  Instead  of  freedom,  the  subjects  of 
William  or  Henry  called  for  the  "good  laws  of  Eadward  the 
Confessor."  But  it  was  as  a  mere  shadow  of  the  past  that  the 
exile  really  returned  to  the  throne  of  Alfred  ;  there  was  some- 
thing shadow-like  in  the  thin  form,  the  delicate  complexion, 
the  transparent  womanly  hands  that  contrasted  with  the 
blue  eyes  and  golden  hair  of  his  race  :  and  it  is  almost  as  a 
shadow  that  he  glides  over  the  political  stage.  The  work  of 
government  was  done  by  sterner  hands.  The  King's  weak- 
ness left  Godwine  master  of  the  realm,  and  he  ruled  firmly 
and  wisely.  Abandoning  with  reluctance  all  interference  in 
Scandinavian  politics,  he  guarded  England  with  a  fleet  which 
cruised  along  the  coast.  Within,  though  the  earldoms  still 
remained  jealously  independent,  there  were  signs  that  a  real 
political  unity  was  being  slowly  brought  about.  It  was  rather 
within  than  without  that  Godwine's  work  had  to  be  done, 
and  that  it  was  well  done  was  proved  by  the  peace  of  the  laud. 
Throughout  Eadward's  earlier  reign  England  lay  in  the 
hands  of  its  three  earls,  Siward  of  Northumbria,  Leofric  of 
Mercia,  and  Godwine  of  Wessex,  and  it  seemed  as 
if  the  old  tendency  to  provincial  separation  was 
to  triumph  with  the  death  of  Cnut.  What  hind- 
ered this  severance  was  the  ambition  of  Godwine.  His  whole 
mind  seemed  set  on  the  aggrandizement  of  his  family.  He 
had  given  his  daughter  to  the  king  as  wife.  His  own  earldom 
embraced  all  England  south  of  Thames.  His  son  Harold 
was  Earl  of  East  Anglia  ;  his  son  Swein  secured  an  earldom 
in  the  west ;  and  his  nephew  Beorn  was  established  in  central 
England.  But  the  first  blow  to  Godwine's  power  came  from 
the  lawlessness  of  Swein.  He  seduced  the  abbess  of  Leo- 
minster,  sent  her  home  again  with  a  yet  more  outrageous 
demand  of  her  hand  in  marriage,  and  on  the  King's  refusal 
to  grant  it  fled  from  the  realm.  Godwine's  influence  secured 
his  pardon,  but  on  his  very  return  to  seek  it  Swein  murdered 
his  cousin  Beorn,  who  had  opposed  the  reconciliation.  He 
again  fled  to  Flanders,  and  a  storm  of  national  indignation 
followed  him  over  sea.  The  meeting  of  the  Wise  Men  branded 
him  as  "  nithing,"  the  "  utterly  worthless,"  yet  in  a  year  hi 
father  wrested  a  new  pardon  from  the  King  and  restored  him 
to  his  earldom.  The  scandalous  inlawing  of.such  a  criminal 
left  Godwine  alone  in  a  struggle  which  soon  arose  with  Ead- 


88  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ward  himself.  The  King  was  a  stranger  in  his  realm,  and 
his  sympathies  lay  naturally  with  the  home  and  friends  of  his 
youth  and  exile.  He  spoke  the  Norman  tongue.  He  used  in 
Norman  fashion  a  seal  for  his  charters.  He  set  Norman  fa- 
vorities  in  the  highest  posts  of  Church  and  State.  Strangers 
such  as  these,  though  hostile  to  the  minister,  Avere  powerless 
against  Godwiue's  influence  and  ability,  and  when  at  a  later 
time  they  ventured  to  stand  alone  against  him  they  fell  with- 
out a  blow.  But  the  general  ill-Avill  at  Swein's  inlawing 
enabled  them  to  stir  Eadward  to  attack  the  Earl.  A  trivial 
quarrel  brought  the  opportunity.  On  his  return  from  a  visit 
to  the  court  Eustace  Count  of  Boulogne,  the  husband  of  the 
King's  sister,  demanded  quarters  for  his  train  in  Dover. 
Strife  arose,  and  many  both  of  the  burghers  and  foreigners 
were  slain.  All  Godwine's  better  nature  withstood  Eadward 
when  the  King  angrily  bade  him  exact  vengeance  from  the 
tOAvn  for  the  affront  to  his  kinsman  ;  and  he  claimed  a  fair 
trial  for  the  townsmen.  Eadward  looked  on  his  refusal  as  an 
outrage,  and  the  quarrel  Avidened  into  open  strife.  Godwiue 
at  once  gathered  his  forces  and  marched  upon  Gloucester, 
demanding  the  expulsion  of  the  foreign  favorites  ;  but  even 
in  a  just  quarrel  the  country  was  cold  in  his  support.  The 
Earls  of  Mercia  and  Northumberland  united  their  forces  to 
those  of  Eadward  ;  and  in  a  gathering  of  the  Wise  Men  at 
London  Swein's  outlawry  was  renewed,  Avhile  Godwine,  de- 
clining with  his  usual  prudence  a  useless  struggle,  withdreAv 
over-sea  to  Flanders. 

But  the  wrath  of  the  nation  was  appeased  by  his  fall. 
Great  as  were  Godwine's  faults,  he  Avas  the  one  man  AvhonoAv 
stood  between  England  and  the  rule  of  the  strangers  who 
flocked  to  the  Court ;  and  a  year  had  hardly  passed  Avhen  at 
the  appearance  of  his  fleet  in  the  Thames  Eadward  Avas  once 
more  forced  to  yield.  The  foreign  prelates  and  bishops  fled 
over-sea,  outlawed  by  the  same  meeting  of  the  Wise  Men 
which  restored  Godwine  to  his  home.  He  returned  only  to 
die,  and  the  direction  of  affairs  passed  quietly  to  his  son. 

Harold  came' to  power  unfettered  by  the  obstacles  Avhich 
had  beset  his  father,  and  for  tAvelve  years  he  was  the  actual 

governor  of  the  realm.     The  courage,  the  ability, 
Earl  Harold,  the  genius  for  administration,   the  ambition  and 

subtlety  of  Godwine  were  found  again  in  his  son. 


THE  ENGLISH   RESTORATION.      1042   TO   1066.         89 

lu  the  internal  government  of  England  he  followed  out  his 
father's  policy  while  avoiding  its  excesses.  Peace  was  pre- 
served, justice  administered,  and  the  realm  increased  in  wealth 
and  prosperity.  Its  gold  work  and  embroidery  became  famous 
in  the  markets  of  Flanders  and  France.  Disturbances  from 
without  were  crushed  sternly  and  rapidly  ;  Harold's  military 
talents  displayed  themselves  in  a  campaign  against  Wales, 
and  in  the  boldness  and  rapidity  with  which,  arming  his 
troops  with  weapons  adapted  for  mountain  conflict,  he  pene- 
trated to  the  heart  of  its  fastnesses  and  reduced  the  country 
to  complete  submission.  But  it  was  a  prosperity  poor  in  the 
nobler  elements  of  national  activity,  and  dead  to  the  more 
vivid  influences  of  spiritual  life.  Literature,  which  on  the 
Continent  was  kindling  into  a  new  activity,  died  down  in  Eng- 
land into  a  few  psalters  and  homilies.  The  few  ministers 
raised  by  king  or  earls  contrasted  strangely  with  the  religious 
enthusiasm  which  was  covering  Normandy  and  the  Rhineland 
with  stately  buildings.  The  Church  sank  into  lethargy. 
Stigand,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was  the  adherent  of 
an  antipope,  and  the  highest  dignity  of  the  English  Church 
was  kept  in  a  state  of  suspension.  No  important  ecclesiasti- 
cal synod,  no  Church  reform,  broke  the  slumbers  of  its  clergy. 
Abroad  Europe  was  waking  to  a  new  revival  of  literature,  of 
art,  of  religion,  but  England  was  all  but  severed  from  the 
Continent.  Like  God  wine,  Harold's  energy  seemed  to  devote 
itself  wholly  to  self-aggrandizement.  With  the  gift  of  the 
Northumbrian  earldom  on  Si  ward's  death  to  Harold's  brother 
-Tostig.  all  England,  save  a  small  part  of  the  older  Mercia, 
lay  in  the  hands  of  the  house  of  Godwine.  As  the  childless 
Eadward  drew  to  the  grave  his  minister  drew  closer  and  closer 
to  the  throne.  One  obstacle  after  another  was  swept  from 
his  path.  A  revolt  of  the  Northumbrians  drove  Tostig,  his 
most  dangerous  opponent,  to  Flanders,  and  the  Earl  was  able 
to  win  over  the  Mercian  house  of  Leofric  to  his  cause  by 
owning  Morkere,  the  brother  of  the  Mercian  Earl 
Eadwine,  as  Tostig's  successor.  His  aim  was  in  fact 
attained  without  a  struggle,  and  the  nobles  and 
bishops  who  were  gathered  round  the  death-bed  of  the 
Confessor  passed  quietly  at  once  from  it  to  the  election  and 
coronation  of  Harold. 


90  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 


Section  III.— Normandy  and  the  Normans,  912—1066. 

[Authorities. — Dudo  of  S.  Quentin,  a  verbose  and  confused  writer,  has  pre- 
served the  earliest  Norman  traditions.  His  work  is  abridged  and  continued  by 
William  of  Jumieges,  a  contemporary  of  the  Conqueror,  whose  work  forms  the 
base  of  the  "  Roman  de  Ron,"  composed  by  Wace  in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Second. 
The  religious  movement  is  best  told  by  Ordericus  Vitalis,  a  Norman  writer  of  the 
twelfth  century,  gossiping  and  confused,  but  full  of  valuable  information.  For 
Lanfranc  see  "  Lanfranci  Opera,  ed.  Giles,"  and  the  life  in  Hook's  "  Archbishops 
of  Canterbury."  For  Anselm  see  the  admirable  biography  by  Dean  Church.  The 
general  history  of  Normandy  is  told  diffusely  but  picturesquely  by  Sir  F.  Pal- 
grave.  "  Normandy  and  England,"  more  accurately  and  succinctly  by  Mr.  Free- 
man, "  History  of  Norman  Conquest,"  vols.  i.  and  ii.] 

The  quiet  of  Harold's  accession  was  at  once  broken  by  news 
of  danger  from  a  land  which,  strange  as  it  seemed  then,  was 
soon  to  become  almost  a  part  of  England  itself.  A 
Normandy,  walk  through  Normandy  teaches  one  more  of  the 
age  of  our  history  which  we  are  about  to  traverse 
than  all  the  books  in  the  world.  The  story  of  the  Conquest 
stands  written  in  the  stately  vault  of  the  minster  of  Caen 
which  still  covers  the  tomb  of  the  Conqueror.  The  name  of 
each  hamlet  by  the  roadside  has  its  memories  for  English 
ears ;  a  fragment  of  castle  wall  marks  the  home  of  the 
Bruce,  a  tiny  little  village  preserves  the  name  of  the  Percy. 
The  very  look  of  the  country  and  its  people  seem  familiar  to 
us  ;  the  peasant  in  his  cap  and  blouse  recalls  the  build  and 
features  of  the  small  English  farmer  ;  the  fields  about  Caen, 
with  their  dense  hedgerows,  their  elms,  their  apple-orchards, 
are  the  very  picture  of  an  English  country-side.  On  the 
windy  heights  around  rise  the  square  gray  keeps  which 
Normandy  handed  on  to  the  cliffs  of  Kichmond  or  the  banks 
of  Thames,  while  huge  cathedrals  lift  themselves  over  the 
red-tiled  roofs  of  little  market  towns,  the  models  of  the 
stately  fabrics  which  superseded  the  lowlier  churches  of 
^Elfred  or  Dunstan. 

Hrolf  the  Ganger,  or  "Walker,  a  Norwegian  and  a  pirate 
leader  like  Guthrum  or  Hasting,  had  wrested  the  land  on 
either  side  the  mouth  of  Seine  from  the  French 
kin&'  Charles  the  Simple,  at  the  moment  when 
JElf  red's  children  were  beginning  their  conquest 
of  the  English  Danelaw.  The  treaty  in  which  France 
purchased  peace  by  this  cession  of  the  coast  was  a  close 
imitation  of  the  peace  of  Wedmore.  Hrolf,  like  Guthrum, 


NORMANDY  AND   THE   NORMANS.      912   TO   1066.      91 

was  baptized,  received  the  king's  daughter  in  marriage, 
and  became  his  vassal  for  the  territory  which  now  took  the 
name  of  "  the  Northman's  land  "  or  Normandy.  But  vas- 
sulage  and  the  new  faith  sat  alike  lightly  on  the  pirate. 
No  such  ties  of  blood  and  speech  tended  to  unite  the  north- 
man  with  the  French  among  whom  he  settled  along  the  Seine  as 
united  him  to  the  Englishmen  among  whom  he  settled  along 
the  Hnmber.  William  Longsword,  the  son  of  Hrolf,  though 
wavering  towards  France  and  Christianity,  remained  a  north- 
man  in  heart ;  he  called  in  a  Danish  colony  to  occupy  his 
conquest  of  the  Cotentin,  the  peninsula  which  runs  out  from 
St.  Michael's  Mount  to  the  cliffs  of  Cherbourg,  and  reared 
his  boy  among  the  northmen  of  Bayeux,  where  the  Danish 
tongue  and  fashions  most  stubbornly  held  their  own.  A 
heathen  reaction  followed  his  death,  and  the  bulk  of  the 
Normans,  with  the  child  Duke  Richard,  fell  away  for  the 
time  from  Christianity,  while  new  pirate-fleets  came  swarm- 
ing up  the  Seine.  To  the  close  of  the  century  the  whole 
people  are  still  "Pirates"  to  the  French  around  them,  their 
land  the  "Pirates'  land,"  their  Duke  the  "  Pirates'  Duke." 
Yet  in  the  end  the  same  forces  which  merged  the  Dane  in 
the  Englishman  told  even  more  powerfully  on  the  Dane  in 
France.  No  race  has  ever  shown  a  greater  power  civilization 
of  absorbing  all  the  nobler  characteristics  of  the  of  Nor- 
peoples  with  whom  they  came  in  contact,  or  .  n^dy- 
of  infusing  their  own  energy  into  them.  During  the  long 
reign  of  Duke  Richard  the  Fearless,  the  son  of  William  Long- 
sword,  heathen  Norman  pirates  became  French  Christians, 
and  feudal  at  heart.  The  old  Norse  language  lived  only 
at  Bayeux,  and  in  a  few  local  names.  As  the  old  northern 
freedom  died  silently  away,  the  descendants  of  the  pirates 
became  feudal  nobles,  and  the  "Pirates'  land"  sank  into 
the  most  loyal  of  the  fiefs  of  France.  The  change  of  man- 
ners was  accompanied  by  a  change  of  faith,  a  change  which 
bound  the  land  where  heathendom  had  fought  stubbornly 
for  life  to  the  cause  of  Christianity  and  the  Church.  The 
dukes  were  the  first  to  be  touched  by  the  new  faith,  but  as 
the  religious  movement  spread  to  the  people  it  was  wel- 
comed with  an  almost  passionate  fanaticism.  Every  road 
was  crowded  with  pilgrims.  Monasteries  rose  in  every  forest 
glade.  Herlouin,  a  knight  of  Brionne,  sought  shelter  from 


92  HISTOJIY   OF   THE  ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

the  world  in  a  little  valley  edged  in  with  woods  of  ash  and 
elm,  through  which  a  beck  or  rivulet  (to  which  his  lumse 
owed  its  after  name)  runs  down  to  the  Risle.  He  was  one 
day  busy  building  an  oven  with  his  own  hands  when  a 
stranger  greeted  him  with  "God  save  you  I"  "Are  you  a 
Lombard  ?  "  asked  the  knight-abbot,  struck  with  the  foreign 
look  of  the  man.  "  I  am/'  he  replied  :  and  praying  to  be 
made  a  monk,  the  stranger  fell  down  at  the  mouth  of  the 
oven  and  kissed  Herlouin's  feet.  The  Lombard  was  Lan- 
franc  of  Pavia,  a  scholar  especially  skilled  in  the  traditions 
of  the  Eoman  law,  who  had  wandered  across  the  Alps  to 
found  a  school  at  Avranches,  and  was  now  drawn  to  a  re- 
ligious life  by  the  fame  of  Herlouin's  sanctity.  The  religious 
impulse  was  a  real  one,  but  Lanfranc  Avas  destined  to  be 
known  rather  as  a  great  administrator  and  statesman  than  as 
a  saint.  His  teaching  raised  Bee  in  a  few  years  into  the  most 
famous  school  of  Christendom  :  it  was  in  fact  the  first  wave  of 
the  intellectual  movement  which  was  spreading  from  Italy  to 
the  ruder  countries  of  the  West.  The  whole  mental  activity  of 
the  time  seemed  concentrated  in  the  group  of  scholars  who 
gathered  round  him  ;  the  fabric  of  the  canon  law  and  of  medi- 
eval scholasticism,  with  the  philosophical  skepticism  which 
first  awoke  under  its  influence,  all  trace  their  origin  to  Bee. 
The  most  famous  of  these  scholars  was  Anselm  of  Aosta, 
an  Italian  like  Lanfranc  himself,  and  who  was  soon  to  suc- 
ceed him  as  Prior  and  teacher  at  Bee.  Friends 
Anselm.  as  they  were,  no  two  men  could  be  more  strangely 
unlike.  Anselm  had  grown  to  manhood  in  the 
quiet  solitude  of  his  mountain-valley,  a  tender-hearted  poet- 
dreamer,  with  a  soul  pure-  as  the  Alpine  snows  above  him, 
and  an  intelligence  keen  and  clear  as  the  mountain  air.  The 
whole  temper  of  the  man  was  painted  in  a  dream  of  his 
youth.  It  seemed  to  him  as  though  heaven  lay,  a  stately 
palace,  amid  the  gleaming  hill-peaks,  while  the  women  reap- 
ing in  the  cornfields  of  the  valley  became  harvest-maidens 
of  its  heavenly  king.  They  reaped  idly,  and  Anselm,  grieved 
at  their  sloth,  hastily  climbed  the  mountain-side  to  accuse 
them  to  their  lord.  As  he  reached  the  palace  the  king's 
voice  called  him  to  his  feet,  and  he  poured  forth  his  tale  ; 
then  at  the  royal  bidding  bread  of  an  unearthly  whiteness 
was  set  before  him,  and  he  ate  and  was  refreshed.  The 


NORMANDY    AND   THE   NORMANS.       912   TO    1066.      93 

dream  passed  with  the  morning ;  but  the  sense  of  heaven's 
nearness  to  earth,  the  fervid  loyalty  to  the  service  of  his 
Lord,  the  tender  restful  ness  and  peace  in  the  Divine  pres- 
ence which  it  reflected  became  the  life  of  Anselm.  Wander- 
ing like  other  Italian  scholars  to  Normandy,  he  became  a 
monk  under  Lanfrauc,  and  on  his  teacher's  removal  to 
higher  duties  succeeded  him  in  the  direction  of  the  Abbey  of 
Bee.  No  teacher  has  ever  thrown  a  greater  spirit  of  love 
into  his  toil.  "  Force  your  scholars  to  improve  !"  he  burst 
out  to  another  teacher  who  relied  on  blows  and  compulsion. 
"  Did  you  ever  see  a  craftsman  fashion  a  fair  image  out  of  a 
golden  plate  by  blows  alone  ?  Does  lie  not  now  gently  press 
it  and  strike  it  with  his  tools,  now  with  wise  art  yet  more 
gently  raise  and  shape  it  ?  What  do  your  scholars  turn  into 
under  this  ceaseless  beating?"  "  They  turn  only  brutal," 
was  the  reply.  "  You  have  bad  luck,"  was  the  keen  answer, 
"  in  a  training  that  only  turns  men  into  beasts."  The  worst 
natures  softened  before  this  tenderness  and  patience.  Even 
the  Conqueror,  so  harsh  and  terrible  to  others,  became  an- 
other man,  gracious  and  easy  of  speech,  with  Anselm. 

But  amidst  his  absorbing  cares  as  a  teacher,  the  Prior  of 
Bee  found  time  for  philosophical  speculations,  to  which  we 
owe  the  great  scientific  inquiries  which  built  up  the  theology 
of  the  middle  ages.  His  famous  works  were  the  first  at- 
tempts of  any  Christian  thinker  to  elicit  the  idea  of  God 
from  the  very  nature  of  the  human  reason.  His  passion  for 
abstruse  thought  robbed  him  of  food  and  sleep.  Sometimes 
he  could  hardly  pray.  Often  the  night  was  a  long  watch  till 
he  could  seize  his  conception  and  write  it  on  the  wax  tablets 
which  lay  beside  him.  But  not  even  a  fever  of  intense 
thought  such  as  this  could  draw  Anselm's  heart  from  its  pas- 
sionate tenderness  and  love.  Sick  monks  in  the  infirmary 
could  relish  no  drink  save  the  juice  which  his  hand  had 
squeezed  for  them  from  the  grape  bunch.  In  the  later  days 
of  his  archbishoprick  a  hare  chased  by  the  hounds  took  ref- 
uge under  his  horse,  and  his  voice  grew  loud  as  he  forbade 
u  huntsman  to  stir  in  the  chase  while  the  creature  darted  off 
again  to  the  woods.  Even  the  greed  of  lands  for  the  Church 
to  which  so  many  religious  men  yielded  found  its  character- 
istic rebuke,  as  the  battling  lawyers  saw  Anselm  quietly  close 
his  eyes  in  court  and  go  peacefully  to  sleep. 


94  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 


Section  IV.— The  Conqueror,  1043—1066. 

[Authorities.—  Primarily  the  "  Gesta  Willelmi "  of  his  chaplain,  William  of 
Poitiers,  a  violent  partizan  of  the  Duke.  William  of  Jumieges  is  here  a  contem- 
porary, and  of  great  value.  Orderic  and  Wace,  with  the  other  riming  chronicle 
of  Benoit  de  Sainte-More,  come  in  the  second  place.  For  the  invasion  and 
Senlac  we  have,  in  addition,  the  contemporary  "  Carmen  de  Bello  Hastingensi," 
by  Guy,  Bishop  of  Amiens,  and  the  invaluable  pictures  of  the  Bayeux  Tapestry. 
The  English  accounts  are  most  meager.  The  invasion  and  battle  of  Senlac 
are  the  subject  of  Mr.  Freeman's  third  volume  ("  Hist,  of  Norman  Conquest  ").] 

It  was  not  this  new  fervor  of  faith  only  which  drove  Nor- 
man pilgrims  in  flocks  to  the  shrines  of  Italy  and  the  Holy 
The  Con-  Land.  The  old  northern  spirit  of  adventure 
qussts  of  the  turned  the  pilgrims  into  Crusaders,  and  the  flower 
Normans.  o£  Norlnan  knighthood,  impatient  of  the  stern 
rule  of  their  dukes,  followed  Roger  de  Toesny  against  the 
Moslem  of  Spain,  or  enlisted  under  the  banner  of  the  Greeks 
in  their  war  with  the  Arabs  who  had  conquered  Sicily.  The 
Normans  became  conquerors  under  Robert  Guiscard,  a 
knight  who  had  left  his  home  in  the  Cotentin  with  a  single 
follower,  but  whose  valor  and  wisdom  soon  placed  him  at  the 
head  of  his  fellow-soldiers  in  Italy.  Attacking  the  Greeks, 
whom  they  had  hitherto  served,  the  Norman  knights  wrested 
Apulia  from  them  in  an  overthrow  at  Cannae,  Guiscard  him- 
self led  them  to  the  conquest  of  Calabria  and  the  great  trad- 
ing cities  of  the  coast,  while  thirty  years  of  warfare  gave 
Sicily  to  the  followers  of  his  brother  Roger.  The  two  con- 
quests were  united  under  a  line  of  princes  to  whose  munifi- 
cence art  owes  the  splendor  of  Palermo  and  Monreale,  and 
literature  the  first  outburst  of  Italian  song.  Normandy,  still 
seething  with  vigorous  life,  was  stirred  to  greed  and  enter- 
prise by  this  plunder  of  the  South,  and  the  rumor  of  Guis- 
card Js  exploits  roused  into  more  ardent  life  the  daring  ambi- 
tion of  its  Duke. 

William  the  Great,  as  men  of  his  own  day  styled  him, 
William  the  Conqueror,  as  by  one  event  he  stamped  himself 
on  our  history,  was  now  Duke  of  Normandy.  The 
ful1  grandeur  of  his  indomitable  will,  his  large 
and  patient  statesmanship,  the  loftiness  of  aim 
which  lifts  him  out  of  the  petty  incidents  of  his  age,  were  as 
yet  only  partly  disclosed.  But  there  never  was  a  moment 
from  his  boyhood  when  he  was  not  among  the  greatest  of  men. 


THE  CONQUEROR  1042  TO  1066.          95 

His  life  was  one  long  mastering  of  difficulty  after  difficulty. 
The  shame  of  his  birth  remained  in  his  name  of  "  the  Bastard." 
His  father,  Duke  Robert,  had  seen  Arlotta,  the  daughter  of 
a  tanner  of  the  town,  washing  her  linen  in  the  little  brook 
by  Falaise,  and  loving  her  had  made  her  the  mother  of  his 
boy.  Robert's  departure  on  a  -pilgrimage  from  which  he 
never  returned  left  William  a  child-ruler  among  the  most 
turbulent  baronage  in  Christendom,  and  treason  and  anarchy 
surrounded  him  as  he  grew  to  manhood.  Disorder  broke  at 
last  into  open  revolt.  Surprised  in  his  hunting-seat  at  Va- 
lognes  by  the  rising  of  the  Bessin  and  Cotentin  districts,  in 
which  the  pirate  temper  and  lawlessness  lingered  longest, 
William  had  only  time  to  dash  through  the  fords  of  Vire 
with  the  rebels  on  his  track.  A  fierce  combat  of  horse  on 
the  slopes  of  Val-es-dunes,  to  the  southeastward  of  Caen, 
left  him  master  of  the  duchy,  and  the  old  Scandinavian 
Normandy  yielded  forever  to  the  new  civilization  which 
streamed  in  with  French  alliances  and  the  French  tongue. 
William  was  himself  a  type  of  the  transition.  In  the  yonug 
duke's  character  the  old  world  mingled  strangely  with  the 
new,  the  pirate  jostled  roughly  with  the  statesman.  Wil- 
liam was  the  most  terrible,  as  he  was  the  last  outcome  of  the 
northern  race.  The  very  spirit  of  the  "sea-wolves"  who 
had  so  long  "  lived  on  the  pillage  of  the  world"  seemed  em- 
bodied in  his  gigantic  form,  his  enormous  strength,  his  sav- 
age countenance,  his  desperate  bravery,  the  fury  of  his 
wrath,  the  ruthlessness  of  his  revenge.  "  No  knight  under 
heaven,"  his  enemies  confessed,  "was  William's  peer." 
Boy  as  he  was,  horse  and  man  went  down  before  his  lance  at 
Val-es-dunes.  All  the  fierce  gaiety  of  his  nature  broke  out 
in  the  chivalrous  adventures  of  his  youth,  in  his  rout  of  fif- 
teen Angevins  with  but  five  soldiers  at  his  back,  in  his  defi- 
ant ride  over  the  ground  which  Geoffry  Martel  claimed  from 
him,  a  ride  with  hawk  on  fist  as  though  war  and  the  chase 
were  one.  No  man  could  bend  his  bow.  His  mace  crashed 
its  way  through  a  ring  of  English  warriors  to  the  foot  of  the 
Standard.  He  rose  to  his  greatest  heights  in  moments  when 
other  men  despaired.  His  voice  rang  out  like  a  trumpet  to 
rally  his  soldiers  as  they  fled  before  the  English  charge  at 
Senlac.  In  his  winter  march  on  Chester  he  strode  afoot  at 
the  head  of  his  fainting  troops,  and  helped  with  his  own 


96  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

hands  to  clear  a  road  through  the  snowdrifts.  With  the 
northman's  daring  broke  out  the  northman's  pitilessness. 
When  the  townsmen  of  Alen9on  hung  raw  hides  along  their 
walls  in  scorn  of  the  baseness  of  his  birth,  with  cries  of 
"  Work  for  the  Tanner  ! "  William  tore  out  his  prisoners' 
eyes,  cut  off  their  hands  and  feet,  and  flung  them  into  the 
town.  At  the  close  of  his  greatest  victory  he  refused  Har- 
old's body  a  grave.  Hundreds .  of  Hampshire  men  were 
driven  from  their  homes  to  make  him  a  hunting-ground,  and 
his  harrying  of  Northumbria  left  the  north  of  England  a 
desolate  waste.  There  is  a  grim,  ruthless  ring  about  his  very 
jests.  In  his  old  age  Philip  of  France  mocked  at  the  Con- 
queror's unwieldy  bulk  and  at  the  sickness  which  confined 
him  to  his  bed  at  Rouen.  "  King  William  has  as  long  a  ly- 
ing-in," laughed  his  enemy,  "  as  a  woman  behind  her  cur- 
tains!" "When  I  get  up,"  swore  William,  "I  will  go  to 
mass  in  Philip's  land,  and  bring  a  rich  offering  for  my 
churching.  I  will  offer  a  thousand  candles  for  my  fee. 
Flaming  brands  shall  they  be,  and  steel  shall  glitter  over  the 
fire  they  make."  At  harvest-tide  town  and  hamlet  flaring 
into  ashes  along  the  French  border  fulfilled  the  Conqueror's 
vow.  There  is  the  same  savage  temper  in  the  loneliness  of 
of  his  life.  He  recked  little  of  men's  love  or  hate.  His 
grim  look,  his  pride,  his  silence,  his  wild  outburts  of  passion, 
spread  terror  through  his  court.  '•'  So  stark  and  fierce  was 
he,"  says  the  English  Chronicler,  "  that  none  dared  resist 
his  will."  His  graciousness  to  Anselm  only  brought  out  into 
stronger  relief  the  general  harshness  of  his  tone.  His  very 
wrath  was  solitary.  "  To  no  man  spake  he,  and  no  man 
dared  speak  to  him,"  when  the  news  reached  him  of  Harold's 
accession  to  the  throne.  It  was  only  when  he  passed  from 
the  palace  to  the  loneliness  of  the  woods  that  the  king's 
temper  unbent.  "  He  loved  the  wild  deer  as  though  he 
had  been  their  father.  Whosoever  should  slay  hart  or  hind 
man  should  blind  him."  Death  itself  took  its  color  from 
the  savage  solitude  of  his  life.  Priests  and  nobles  fled  as  the 
last  breath  left  him,  and  the  Conqueror's  body  lay  naked 
and  lonely  on  the  floor. 

It  was  the  genius  of  William  which  lifted  him  out  of  this 
mere  northman  into  a  great  general  and  a  great  statesman. 
The  growth  of  the  Norman  power  was  jealously  watched  by 


THE   CONQUEROR.      1042   TO    1066.  !»7 

Geoff  ry  Martel,  the  Count  of  Anjou,  and  his  influence  suc- 
ceeded in  converting  France  from  friend  to  foe.  The  danger 
changed  William  at  once  from  the  chivalrous 
knight-errant  of  Val-es-dunes  into  a  wary  strate- 
gist.  As  the  French  army  crossed  the  border  he 
hung  cautiously  on  its  flanks,  till  a  division  which  had  en- 
camped in  the  little  town  of  Mortemer  had  been  surprised  and 
cut  to  pieces  by  his  soldiers.  A  second  division  was  still  held 
at  bay  by  the  duke  himself,  when  Ralph  de  Toesny  climbing 
up  into  a  tree,  shouted  to  them  the  news  of  their  comrades' 
fall.  "  Up,  up,  Frenchmen  !  you  sleep  too  long  :  go  bury 
your  friends  that  lie  slain  at  Mortemer."  A  second  and  more 
formidable  invasion  four  years  later  was  met  with  the  same  cau- 
tious strategy.  William  hung  on  the  Frenchmen's  flank,  look- 
ing coolly  on  while  town  and  abbey  were  plundered,  the  Bessin 
ravaged,  Caen  sacked,  and  the  invaders  prepared  to  cross  the 
Dive  at  Yaruville  and  carry  fire  and  sword  into  the  rich  land 
of  Lisieux.  But  only  half  the  army  was  over  the  river  when 
the  duke  fell  suddenly  upon  its  rear.  The  fight  raged  till 
the  rising  of  the  tide  cut  the  French  forces,  as  William  had 
foreseen,  hopelessly  in  two.  Huddled  together  on  a  narrow 
causeway,  swept  by  the  Norman  arrows,  knights,  footmen, 
and  baggage  train  were  involved  in  the%  same  ruin.  Not  a 
man  escaped,  and  the  French  king,  who  had  been  forced  to 
look  on  helplessly  from  the  opposite  bank,  fled  home  to  die. 
The  death  of  Geoffry  Martel  left  William  without  a  rival 
among  the  princes  of  France.  Maine,  the  border  land  be- 
tween Norman  and  Angevin,  and  which  had  for  the  last  ten 
years  been  held  by  Anjou,  submitted  without  a  struggle  to 
his  rule.  Hritanny,  which  had  joined  the  league  of  his  foes, 
was  reduced  to  submission  by  a  single  march. 

All  this  activity  abroad  was  far  from  distracting  the  duke's 
attention  from  Normandy  itself.  It  was  hard  to  secure  peace 
and  order  in  a  land  filled  with  turbulent  robber- 
iords.  "  The  Normans  must  be  trodden  down  and 
kept  under  foot/' said  one  of  their  poets,  "for  he 
only  who  bridles  them  may  use  them  at  his  need."  William 
;'  could  never  love  a  robber."  His  stern  protection  of  trader 
and  peasant  roused  the  baronage  through  his  first  ten  years 
to  incessant  revolt.  His  very  kinsfolk  headed  the  discon- 
tent, and  summoned  the  French  king  to  their  aid.  But  the 


98  HISTORY   OF    THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

victories  of  Mortemer  and  Varaville  left  the  rebels  at'  his 
mercy.  Some  rotted  in  his  dungeons,  some  were  driven  into 
exile,  and  joined  the  conquerors  of  A.pulia  and  Sicily.  The 
land  settled  down  into  peace  and  order,  and  William  turned 
to  the  reform  of  the  Church.  Malger,  the  Archbishop  of 
Rouen,  a  mere  hunting  and  feasting  prelate,  was  summarily 
deposed,  and  his  place  filled  by  Maurilius,  a  French  ecclesi- 
astic of  piety  and  learning.  Frequent  councils  under  the 
duke's  guidance  amended  the  morals  of  the  clergy.  The 
school  of  Bee,  as  we  have  seen,  had  become  a  center  of  edu- 
cation ;  and  William,  with  the  keen  insight  into  men  which 
formed  so  marked  a  feature  in  his  genius,  selected  its  prior 
as  his  chief  adviser.  In  a  strife  with  the  Papacy  which  the 
duke  had  provoked  by  his  marriage  with  Matilda  of  Flan- 
ders, Lanfranc  took  the  side  of  Rome,  and  his  opposition  had 
been  punished  by  a  sentence  of  banishment.  The  prior  set 
out  on  a  lame  horse,  the  only  one  his  house  could  afford,  and 
Vas  overtaken  by  the  duke,  impatient  that  he  should  quit 
Normandy.  "  Give  me  a  better  horse  and  I  shall  j^o  the 
quicker,"  replied  the  imperturbable  Lombard,  and  the  duke's 
wrath  passed  into  laughter  and  good-will.  From  that  hour 
Lanfranc  became  his  minister  and  counselor,  whether  for 
affairs  in  the  duchy  itself  or  for  the  more  daring  schemes 
of  ambition  which  were  opened  up  to  him  by  the  position  of 
England. 

For  half  a  century  the  two  countries  had  been  drawing 
nearer  together.  At  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Richard  the 
England  Fearless  the  Danish  descents  upon  the  English 
and  the  coast  had  found  support  in  Normandy,  and  their 
Normans.  fleefc  ha(j  wintered  in  her  ports.  It  was  to  re- 
venge these  attacks  that  ^Ethelred  had  despatched  a  fleet 
across  the  Channel  to  ravage  the  Cotentin,  but  the  fleet  was 
repulsed,  and  the  strife  appeased  by  ^Ethelred's  marriage 
with  Emma,  a  sister  of  Richard  the  Good.  ^Ethelred  with 
his  children  found  shelter  in  Normandy  from  the  Danish 
kings,  and,  if  Norman  accounts  are  to  be  trusted,  contrary 
winds  alone  prevented  a  Norman  fleet  from  undertaking  their 
restoration.  The  peaceful  recall  of  Edward  to  the  throne 
seemed  to  open  England  to  Norman  ambition,  and  God  wine 
was  no  sooner  banished  than  Duke  William  appeared  at  the 
English  court,  and  received,  as  he  afterwards  asserted,  a 


THE   CONQUEROK.       1042   TO    1066.  99 

promise  of  succession  to  its  throne  from  the  king.  Such  a 
promise,  unconfirmed  by  the  national  assembly  of  the  Wise 
Men,  was  utterly  valueless,  and  for  the  moment  Godwine's 
recall  put  an  end  to  William's  hopes.  They  are  said  to  have 
been  revived  by  a  storm  which  threw  Harold,  while  cruising 
in  the  Channel,  on  the  French  coast,  and  William  forced  him 
to  swear  on  the  relics  of  saints  to  support  the  duke's  claim 
as  the  price  of  his  own  return  to  England  :  but  the  news  of 
the  king's  death  was  at  once  followed  by  that  of  Harold's 
accession,  and  after  a  burst  of  furious  passion  the  duke  pre- 
pared to  enforce  his  claim  by  arms.  William  did  not  claim 
the  crown.  He  claimed  simply  the  right  which  he  after- 
wards used  when  his  sword  had  won  it,  of  presenting  himself 
for  election  by  the  nation,  and  he  believed  himself  entitled 
so  to  present  himself  by  the  direct  commendation  of  the  Con- 
fessor. The  actual  election  of  Harold  which  stood  in  his 
way,  hurried  as  it  was,  he  did  not  recognize  as  valid.  But 
with  this  constitutional  claim  was  inextricably  mingled  his 
resentment  at  the  private  wrong  which  Harold  had  done  him, 
and  a  resolve  to  exact  vengeance  on  the  man  whom  he  re- 
garded as  untrue  to  his  oath. 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  his  enterprise  were  indeed 
enormous.  He  could  reckon  on  no  support  within  England 
itself.  At  home  he  had  to  extort  the  consent  of 
his  own  reluctant  baronage  ;  to  gather  a  motley  t^gt^e  °fe 
host  from  every  quarter  of  France,  and  to  keep  it 
together  for  months  ;  to  create  a  fleet,  to  cut  down  the  very 
trees,  to  build,  to  launch,  to  man  the  vessels  ;  and  to  find 
time  amidst  all  this  for  the  common  business  of  government, 
for  negotiations  with  Denmark  and  the  Empire,  with  France, 
Britanny,  and  Anjou,  with  Flanders  and  with  Rome.  His 
rival's  difficulties  were  hardly  less  than  his  own.  Harold  was 
threatened  with  invasion  not  only  by  William  but  by  his 
brother  Tostig,  who  had  taken  refuge  in  Norway  and  secured 
the  aid  of  its  king,  Harald  Hardrada.  The  fleet  and  army 
he  had  gathered  lay  watching  for  months  along  the  coast. 
His  one  standing  force  was  his  body  of  hus-carls,  but  their 
numbers  only  enabled  them  to  act  as  the  nucleus  of  an  army. 
On  the  other  hand  the  Land-fyrd,  or  general  levy  of  fighting- 
men,  was  a  body  easy  to  raise  for  any  single  encounter,  but 
hard  to  keep  together.  To  assemble  such  a  force  was  to 


100  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

bring  labor  to  a  standstill.  The  men  gathered  under  the 
king's  standard  were  the  farmers  and  plowmen  of  their  fields. 
The  ships  were  the  fishing-vessels  of  the  coast.  In  Septem- 
ber the  task  of  holding  them  together  became  impossible, 
but  their  dispersion  had  hardly  taken  place  when  the  two 
clonds  which  had  so  long  been  gathering  burst  at  once  upon 
the  realm.  A  change  of  wind  released  the  landlocked  arma- 
ment of  William  ;  but  before  changing,  the  wind  which  pris- 
oned the  duke  had  flung  the  host  of  Harald  Hardradaon  the 
coast  of  Yorkshire.  The  king  hastened  with  his  household 
troops  to  the  north,  and  repulsed  the  invaders  in  a  decisive 
overthrow  at  Stamford  Bridge,  in  the  neighborhood  of  York  ; 
but  ere  he  could  hurry  back  to  London  the  Norman  host  had 
crossed  the  sea,  and  William,  who  had  anchored  on  the  28th 
off  Pevensey,  was  ravaging  the  coast  to  bring  his  rival  to  an 
engagement.  His  merciless  ravages  succeeded,  as  they  were 
intended,  in  drawing  Harold  from  London  to  the  south  ;  but 
the  king  wisely  refused  to  attack  with  the  forces  he  had 
hastily  summoned  to  his  banner.  If  he  was  forced  to  give 
battle,  he  resolved  to  give  it  on  ground  he  had  himself 
chosen,  and  advancing  near  enough  to  the  coast  to  check 
William's  ravages,  he  entrenched  himself  on  a  hill  known 
afterwards  as  that  of  Senlac,  a  low  spur  of  the  Sussex  Downs 
near  Hastings.  His  position  covered  London,  and  drove 
William  to  concentrate  his  forces.  With  a  host  subsisting 
by  pillage,  to  concentrate  is  to  starve  ;  and  no  alternative 
was  left  to  William  but  a  decisive  victory  or  ruin. 

Along  the  higher  ground  that  leads  from  Hastings  the 
duke  led  his  men  in  the  dim  dawn  of  an  October  morning,  to 
the  mound  of  Telham.     It  was  from  this  point 


tliat  the  Normans  saw  the  host  of  the  English 
gathered  thickly  behind  a"  rough  trench  and 
a  stockade  on  the  heights  of  Senlac.  Marshy  ground 
covered  their  right  ;  on  the  left,  the  most  exposed  part 
of  the  position,  the  hus-carls  or  body-guard  of  Harold, 
men  in  full  armor,  and  wielding  huge  axes,  were  grouped 
round  the  Golden  Dragon  of  Wessex  and  the  Stand- 
ard of  the  king.  The  rest  of  the  ground  was  covered  by 
thick  masses  of  half-armed  rustics,  who  had  flocked  at 
Harold's  summons  to  the  fight  with  the  stranger.  It  was 
against  the  center  of  this  formidable  position  that  William 


THE   CONQUEROR.      1042   TO   1066.  101 

arrayed  his  Norman  knighthood,  while  the  mercenary  forces 
lie  had  gathered  in  France  and  Britanny  were  ordered  to 
attack  its  flanks.  A  general  charge  of  the  Norman  foot 
opened  the  battle  ;  in  front  rode  the  minstrel  Taillefer,  toss- 
ing his  sword  in  the  air  and  catching  it  again,  while  he 
chanted  the  song  of  Roland.  He  was  the  first  of  the  host  who 
struck  a  blow,  and  he  was  the  first  to  fall.  The  charge  broke 
vainly  on  the  stout  stockade,  behind  which  the  English  war- 
riors plied  ax  and  javelin  with  fierce  cries  of  "  Out,  out/'  and 
the  repulse  of  the  Norman  footmen  was  followed  by  a  repulse 
of  the  Norman  horse.  Again  and  again  the  duke  rallied 
and  led  them  to  the  fatal  stockade.  All  the  fury  of  fight 
that  glowed  in  his  Norseman's  blood,  all  the  headlong  valor 
that  had  spurred  him  over  the  slopes  of  Val-es-dunes,  min- 
gled that  day  with  the  coolness  of  head,  the  dogged  persever- 
ance, the  inexhaustible  faculty  of  resource  which  had  shone 
at  Mortemer  and  Varaville.  His  Breton  troops,  entangled  in 
the  marshy  ground  on  his  left,  broke  in  disorder,  and  as  panic 
spread  through  the  army  a  cry  arose  that  the  duke  was  slain. 
"I  live,"  shouted  William,  as  he  tore  off  his  helmet,  "and 
by  God's  help  will  conquer  yet."  Maddened  by  repulse,  the 
duke  spurred  right  at  the  standard ;  unhorsed,  his  terrible 
mace  struck  down  Gyrth,  the  king's  brother  ;  again  dis- 
mounted, a  blow  from  his  hand  hurled  to  the  ground  an  un- 
mannerly  rider  who  would  not  lend  him  his  steed.  Amidst 
the  roar  and  tumult  of  the  battle  he  turned  the  flight  he  had 
arrested  into  the  means  of  victory.  Broken  as  the  stockade 
was  by  his  desperate  onset,  the  shield- wall  of  the  warriors  be- 
hind it  still  held  the  Normans  at  bay,  till  William,  by  a  feint 
of  flight,  drew  a  part  of  the  English  force  from  their  post 
of  vantage.  Turning  on  his  disorderly  pursuers,  the  duke 
cut  them  to  pieces,  broke  through  the  abandoned  line,  and 
made  himself  master  of  the  central  ground.  Meanwhile,  the 
French  and  Bretons  made  good  their  ascent  on  either  flank. 
At  three  the  hill  seemed  won,  at  six  the  fight  still  raged 
around  the  Standard,  where  Harold's  hus-carls  stood  stub- 
bornly at  bay,  on  a  spot  marked  afterwards  by  the  high  altar 
of  Battle  Abbey.  An  order  from  the  duke  at  last  brought  his 
archers  to  the  front,  and  their  arrow-flight  told  heavily  on 
the  dense  masses  crowded  round  the  king.  As  the  sun  went 
down  a  shaft  pk'ruud  Harold's  right  eye  ;  he  fell  between  the 


102  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

royal  ensigns,  and  the  battle  closed  with  a  desperate  melly 
over  his  corpse.  "While  night  covered  the  flight  of  the  Eng- 
lish, the  conqueror  pitched  his  tent  on  the  very  spot  where 
his  rival  had  fallen,  and  "  sate  down  to  eat  and  drink  among 
the  dead." 

Securing  Romuey  and  Dover,  the  duke  marched  by  Can- 
terbury upon  London.  Faction  and  intrigue  were  doing  his 
William  WOI>k  f°r  him.  as  he  advanced.  Harold's  brothers 
becomes  had  fallen  with  the  king  on  the  field  of  Senlac, 
^S-  and  there  was  none  of  the  house  of  God  wine 
to  contest  the  crown  ;  while  of  the  old  royal  line  there  re- 
mained but  a  single  boy,  Eadgar  the  ^Etheling,  son  of  the 
eldest  of  Eadmund  Ironside's  children,  who  had  fled  before 
^nut's  persecution  as  far  as  Hungary  for  shelter.  Boy  as  he 
was,  he  was  chosen  king  ;  but  the  choice  gave  little  strength 
to  the  national  cause.  The  widow  of  the  Confessor  surren- 
dered Winchester  to  the  duke.  The  bishops  gathered  at 
London  inclined  to  submission.  The  citizens  themselves 
faltered  as  William,  passing  by  their  walls,  gave  Southwark 
to  the  flames.  The  throne  of  the  boy-king  really  rested  for 
support  on  the  Earls  of  Mercia  and  Northumbria,  Eadwine 
and  Morkere  ;  and  William,  crossing  the  Thames  at  Walling- 
ford,  and  marching  into  Hertfordshire,  threatened  to  cut 
them  off  from  their  earldoms.  The  masterly  movement 
brought  about  an  instant  submission.  Eadwine  and  Morkere 
retreated  hastily  home  from  London,  and  the  city  gave  way 
at  once.  Eadgar  himself  was  at  the  head  of  the  deputation 
who  came  to  offer  the  crown  to  the  Norman  duke.  "  They 
bowed  to  him,"  says  the  English  annalist  pathetically,  "  for 
need."  They  bowed  to  the  Norman  as  they  had  bowed  to  the 
Dane,  and  William  accepted  the  crown  in  the  spirit  of  Cnut. 
London  indeed  was  secured  by  the  erection  of  a  fortress 
which  afterwards  grew  into  the  Tower,  but  William  desired 
to  reign  not  as  a  conqueror,  but  as  a  lawful  king.  He  re- 
ceived the  crown  at  Westminster  from  the  hands  of  Arch- 
bishop Ealdred,  amidst  shouts  of  "Yea,  Yea,"  from  his  new 
English  subjects.  Fines  from  the  greater  landowners  atoned 
for  a  resistance  which  was  now  counted  as  rebellion;  but  with 
this  exception  every  measure  of  the  new  sovereign  indicated 
his  desire  of  ruling  as  a  successor  of  Eadward  or^Elfred.  As 
yet,  indeed,  the  greater  part  of  England  remained  quietly 


Kilit  li;i  liii'is  the  dead  body  uf  Harold. 


THE  NORMAN   CONQUEST.      1068   TO   1071.          108 

aloof  from  him,  and  he  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  been  rec- 
ognized as  king  by  Northnmbria  or  the  greater  part  of  Mercia. 
But  to  the  east  of  a  line  which  stretched  from  Norwich  to 
Dorsetshire  his  rule  was  unquestioned,  and  over  this  portion 
he  ruled  as  an  English  king.  His  soldiers  were  kept  in  strict 
order.  No  change  was  made  in  law  or  custom.  The  privi- 
leges of  London  were  recognized  by  a  royal  writ  which  still 
remains,  the  most  venerable  of  its  muniments,  among  the 
city's  archives.  Peace  and  order  were  restored.  William 
even  attempted,  though  in  vain,  to  learn  the  English  tongue, 
that  he  might  personally  administer  justice  to  the  suitors  in 
his  court.  The  kingdom  seemed  so  tranquil  that  only  a  few 
mouths  had  passed  after  the  battle  of  Senlac  when  William, 
leaving  England  in  charge  of  his  brother,  Odo  Bishop  of 
Bayeux,  and  his  minister,  William  Fitz-Osbern,  returned 
for  a  while  to  Normandy. 


Section  V.— The  Norman  Conquest,   1068 — 1071. 

[Authorities. — The  Norman  writers  as  before,  Orderic  being  particularly  valuable 
and  detailed.  The  Chronicle  and  Florence  of  Worcester  are  the  primary  English 
authorities  (for  the  so-called  "  Ingulf  of  Croyland  "  is  a  forgery  of  the  14th  cen- 
tury). Domesday  Book  is  of  course  indispensable  for  the  Norman  settlement ; 
the  introduction  to  it  by  Sir  Henry  Ellis  gives  a  brief  account  of  its  chief  results. 
Among  secondary  authorities  Simeon  of  Durham  is  useful  for  northern  matters, 
and  William  of  Malmesbury  valuable  from  his  remarkable  combination  of  Norman 
and  English  feeling.  The  Norman  Constitution  is  described  at  length  by  Lingard, 
but  best  studied  in  the  Constitutional  History  and  Select  Charters  of  Dr.  Stubbs. 
The  "  Anglia  Judaica  "  of  Toovey  gives  some  account  of  the  Jewish  colonies.  For 
the  history  as  a  whole,  see  Mr.  Freeman's  "  Norman  Conquest,"  vol.  iv.] 

It  is  not  to  his  victory  at  Senlac,  but  to  the  struggle  which 
followed  his  return  from  Normandy,  that  William  owes  his 
title  of  the  "  Conqueror."  During  his  absence 
bishop  Odo's  tyranny  had  forced  the  Kentishmen 
to  seek  aid  from  Count  Eustace  of  Boulogne  ; 
while  the  Welsh  princes  supported  a  similar  rising  against 
Norman  oppression  in  the  west.  But  as  yet  the  bulk  of  the 
land  held  fairly  to  the  new  king.  Dover  was  saved  from 
Eustace ;  and  the  discontented  fled  over  sea  to  seek  refuge 
in  lands  as  far  off  as  Constantinople,  where  Englishmen 
from  this  time  formed  great  part  of  the  body-guard  or 
Varangians  of  the  Eastern  empress.  William  returned  to 


104  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLTSlt   PEOPLE. 

take  his  place  again  as  an  English  king.  It  was  with  an  Eng- 
lish force  that  he  subdued  a  rising  in  the  southwest  led  by 
Exeter,  and  it  was  at  the  head  of  an  English  army  that  he 
completed  his  work  by  marching  to  the  north.  His  inarch 
brought  Eadwine  and  Morkere  again  to  submission  ;  a  fresh 
rising  ended  in  the  occupation  of  York,  and  England  as  far 
as  the  Tees  lay  quietly  at  William's  feet. 

It  was  in  fact  only  the  national  revolt  of  1068  that  trans- 
formed the  king  into  a  conqueror.  The  signal  for  this 
revolt  came  from  without.  Swein,  the  king  of  Denmark, 
had  for  two  years  been  preparing  to  dispute  England  with 
the  Norman,  and  on  the  appearance  of  his  fleet  in  the 
Humber  all  northern,  all  western  and  southwestern  England 
rose  as  one  man.  Eadgar  the  Jiltheling  with  a  band  of  exiles 
who  had  taken  refuge  in  Scotland  took  the  head  of  the 
Northumbrian  revolt ;  in  the  southwest  the  men  of  Devon, 
Somerset,  and  Dorset  gathered  to  the  sieges  of  Exeter  and 
Montacute;  while  a  new  Norman  castle  at  Shrewsbury  alone 
bridled  a  rising  in  the  west.  So  ably  had  the  revolt  been 
planned  that  even  William  was  taken  by  surprise.  The 
news  of  the  loss  of  York  and  of  the  slaughter  of  three 
thousand  Normans  who  formed  its  garrison  reached  him  as  he 
was  hunting  in  the  Forest  of  Dean  ;  and  in  a  wild  outburst 
of  wrath  the  king  swore  "by  the  splendor  of  God"  to 
avenge  himself  on  the  north.  But  wrath  went  hand  in  hand 
with  the  coolest  statesmanship.  William  saw  clearly  that 
the  center  of  resistance  lay  in  the  Danish  fleet,  and  pushing 
rapidly  to  the  Humber  with  a  handful  of  horsemen,  he  pur- 
chased by  a  heavy  bribe  its  inactivity  and  withdrawal.  Then 
leaving  York  to  the  last,  William  turned  rapidly  westward 
with  the  troops  which  gathered  round  him,  and  swept  the 
Welsh  border  as  far  as  Shrewsbury,  while  William  Fitz- 
Osbern  broke  the  rising  round  Exeter.  His  success  set  the 
king  free  to  fulfil  his  oath  of  vengeance  on  the  north.  After 
a  long  delay  before  the  flooded  waters  of  the  Aire  he  entered 
York,  and  ravaged  the  whole  country  as  far  as  the  Tees  with 
fire  and  sword.  Town  and  village  were  harried  and  burnt, 
their  inhabitants  slain  or  driven  over  the  Scotch  border. 
The  coast  was  especially  wasted  that  no  hold  might  remain 
for  any  future  invasion  of  the  Danes.  Harvest,  cattle,  the 
very  implements  of  husbandry  were  so  mercilessly  destroyed 


THE   NORMAN   CONQUEST.      1068   TO   1071.  105 

that  the  famine  which  followed  is  suid  to  have  swept  off 
more  than  a  hundred  thousand  victims,  and  half  a  century  later 
the  land  still  lay  bare  of  culture  and  deserted  of  men  for  sixty 
miles  northward  of  York.  The  work  of  vengeance  was  no 
sooner  over  than  William  led  his  army  back  from  the  Tees 
to  York,  and  thence  to  Chester  and  the  west.  Never  had  he 
shown  the  grandeur  of  his  character  so  memorably  as  in  this 
terrible  march.  The  winter  was  severe,  the  roads  choked 
with  snowdrifts  or  broken  by  torrents  ;  provisions  failed, 
and  the  army,  drenched- with  rain  and  forced  to  consume  its 
horses  for  food,  broke  out  into  open  mutiny  at  the  order  to 
advance  across  the  bleak  moorlands  that  part  Yorkshire  from 
the  west.  The  mercenaries  from  Anjou  and  Britanny  de- 
manded their  release  from  service,  and  William  granted  their 
prayer  with  scorn.  On  foot,  at  the  head  of  the  troops  which 
remained  faithful,  the  king  forced  his  way  by  paths 
inaccessible  to  horses,  often  aiding  his  own  hands  to  clear 
the  road.  The  last  hopes  of  the  English  ceased  on  his 
arrival  at  Chester  ;  the  king  remained  undisputed  master  of 
the  conquered  country,  and  busied  himself  in  the  erection  of 
numerous  castles  which  were  henceforth  to  hold  it  in  sub- 
jection. Two  years  passed  quietly  ere  the  last  act  of  the 
conquest  was  reached.  By  the  withdrawal  of  the  Dane  the 
hopes  of  England  rested  wholly  on  the  aid  it  looked  for  from 
Scotland,  where  Eadgar  the  ^Etheling  had  taken  refuge,  and 
where  his  sister  Margaret  had  become  the  wife  of  King  Mal- 
colm. It  was  probably  some  assurance  of  Malcolm's  aid 
which  roused  Eadwine  and  Morkere  to  a  new  revolt,  which 
was  at  once  foiled  by  the  vigilance  of  the  Conqueror.  Ead- 
wiue  fell  in  an  obscure  skirmish,  while  Morkere  found  refuge 
for  a  time  in  the  marshes  of  the  eastern  counties,  where  a 
desperate  band  of  patriots  gathered  round  an  outlawed 
leader,  Hereward.  Nowhere  had  William  found  so  stubborn 
a  resistance ;  but  a  causeway,  two  miles  long  was  at  last 
driven  across  the  fens,  and  the  last  hopes  of  English  freedom . 
died  in  the  surrender  of  Kly.  Malcolm  alone  held  out  till 
the  Conqueror  summoned  the  whole  host  of  the  crown,  and 
crossing  the  Lowlands  and  the  Forth  penetrated  into  the 
heart  of  Scotland.  He  had  reached  the  Tay  when  the  king's 
resistance  gave  way,  and  Malcolm  appeared  in  the  English 
camp  and  swore  fealty  at  William's  feet. 


106  HISTOKY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

The  struggle  which  ended  in  the  fens  of  Ely  had  wholly 

changed    William's   position.     He  no  longer  held  the  land 

merely  as  elected  king,  he  added  to  his  elective 

William  and    •   ^    tj       ri_j,t    of    COnquest.     The    system    of 

Feudalism.        6  &    .  .   •> 

government  which  he  originated  was,  in  fact,  the 

result  of  the  double  character  of  his  power.  It  repre- 
sented neither  the  purely  feudal  system  of  the  Continent 
nor  the  system  of  the  older  English  royalty.  More  truly 
perhaps  it  may  be  said  to  have  represented  both.  As  the 
successor  of  Eadward,  William  retained  the  judicial  and 
administrative  organization  of  the  older  English  realm.  As 
the  conqueror  of  England  he  introduced  the  military  organi- 
zation of  feudalism  so  far  as  was  necessary  for  the  secure  pos- 
session of  his  conquests.  The  ground  was  already  prepared 
for  such  an  organization  ;  we  have  seen  the  beginnings  of 
English  feudalism  in  the  warriors,  the  "  companions "  or 
"  thegns"  who  were  personally  attached  to  the  king's  war- 
band,  and  received  estates  from  the  folk-land  in  reward  for 
their  personal  services.  In  later  times  this  feudal  distribution 
of  estates  had  greatly  increased,  as  the  bulk  of  the  nobles  fol- 
lowed the  king's  example  and  bound  their  tenants  to  them- 
selves by  a  similar  process  of  subinfeudation.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  pure  freeholders,  the  class  which  formed  the  basis 
of  the  original  English  society,  had  been  gradually  reduced 
in  number,  partly  through  imitation  of  the  class  above  them, 
but  still  more  through  the  incessant  wars  and  invasions  which 
drove  them  to  seek  protectors  among  the  thegns  at  the  cost 
of  their  independence.  Feudalism,  in  fact,  was  superseding 
the  older  freedom  in  England  even  before  the  reign  of  Wil- 
liam, as  it  had  already  superseded  it  in  Germany  or  France. 
But  the  tendency  was  quickened  and  intensified  by  the  Con- 
quest ;  the  desperate  and  universal  resistance  of  his  English 
subjects  forced  William  to  hold  by  the  sword  what  the  sword 
had  won,  and  an  army  strong  enough  to  crush  at  any  moment 
a  national  revolt  was  necessary  for  the  preservation  of  his 
throne.  Such  an  army  could  only  be  maintained  by  a  vast 
confiscation  of  the  soil.  The  failure  of  the  English  risings 
cleared  the  way  for  its  establishment  ;  the  greater  part  of  the 
higher  nobility  fell  in  battle  or  fled  into  exile,  while  the  lower 
thegnhood  either  forfeited  the  whole  of  their  lands  or  re- 
deemed a  portion  of  them  by  the  surrender  of  the  rest.  We 


THE   NORMAN   CONQUEST.      1068    TO   1071.          107 

see4  the  completeness  of  the  confiscation  in  the  vast  estates 
which  William  was  enabled  to  grant  to  his  more  powerful 
followers.  Two  hundred  manors  in  Kent,  with  an  equal 
nu  in  her  elsewhere,  rewarded  the  services  of  his  brother  Odo, 
and  grunts  almost  as  large  fell  to  William's  counselors,  Fitz- 
Osbern  and  Montgomery,  or  to  barons  like  theMowbrays  and 
the  Clares.  But  the  poorest  soldier  of  fortune  found  his  part 
in  the  spoil.  The  meanest  Norman  rose  to  wealth  and  power 
in  the  new  dominion  of  his  lord.  Great  or  small,  however, 
each  estate  thus  granted  was  granted  on  condition  of  its 
holder's  service  at  the  king's  call ;  and  when  the  larger  hold- 
ings were  divided  by  their  owners  into  smaller  sub-tenancies, 
the  under-tenants  were  bound  by  the  same  conditions  of  ser- 
vice to  their  lord.  •'  Hear,  my  lord/'  swore  the  feudal  de- 
pendant, as  kneeling  without  arms  and  bareheaded  he  placed 
his  hands  within  those  of  his  superior  :  "  I  become  liege  man 
of  yours  for  life  and  limb  and  earthly  regard,  and  I  will  keep 
faith  and  loyalty  to  you  for  life  and  death,  God  help  me." 
The  kiss  of  his  lord  invested  him  with  land  or  "  fief"  to  de- 
scend" to  him  and  his  heirs  forever.  A  whole  army  was  by 
this  means  encamped  upon  the  soil,  and  William's  summons 
could  at  any  moment  gather  an  overwhelm  ing  force  around 
his  standard. 

Such  a  force,  however,  effective  as  it  was  against  the  con- 
quered, was  hardly  less  formidable  to  the  crown  itself. 
William  found  himself  fronted  in  his  new  realm  by 
the  feudal  baronage  whom  he  had  so  hardly  sub- 
dued  to  his  will  in  Normandy,  nobles  impatient 
of  law,  as  jealous  of  the  royal  power,  and  as  eager  for  un- 
bridled military  and  judicial  independence  within  their  own 
manors  here  as  there.  The  genius  of  the  Conqueror  was 
shown  in  his  quick  discernment  of  this  danger,  and  in  the 
skill  with  which  ho  met  it.  He  availed  himself  of  the  old 
legal  constitution  of  the  conntry  to  hold  justice  firmly  in  his 
own  hands.  He  retained  the  local  courts  of  the  hundred 
and  the  shire,  where  every  freeman  had  a  place,  while  he  sub- 
jected all  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  King's  Court,  which 
towards  the  close  of  the  earlier  English  monarchy  had  assumed 
the  right  of  hearing  appeals  and  of  calling  up  cases  from  any 
quarter  to  its  bar.  The  authority  of  the  Crown  was  main- 
tained by  the  abolition  of  the  great  earldoms  which  had 


108  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

overshadowed  it,  those  of  Wessex,  Mercia,  and  Northumber- 
land, and  by  the  royal  nomination  of  sheriffs  for  the  govern- 
ment of  the  shires.  Large  as  the  estates  he  granted  were, 
they  were  scattered  over  the  country  in  a  way  which  made 
union  between  the  landowners,  or  the  hereditary  attachment 
of  great  masses  of  vassals  to  a  separate  lord,  equally  impos- 
sible. In  other  countries  a  vassal  owed  fealty  to  his  lord 
against  all  foes,  be  they  king  or  no.  By  a  usage,  however, 
which  William  enacted,  and  which  was  peculiar  to  England, 
each  sub-tenant,  in  addition  to  his  oath  of  fealty  to  his  lord, 
swore  fealty  directly  to  the  crown,  and  loyalty  to  the  king 
was  thus  established  as  the  supreme  and  universal  duty  of  all 
Englishmen.  The  feudal  obligations,  too,  the  rights  and 
dues  owing  from  each  estate  to  the  King,  were  enforced  with 
remarkable  strictness.  Each  tenant  was  bound  to  appear,  if 
needful,  thrice  a  year  at  the  royal  court,  to  pay  a  heavy  fine  or 
rent  on  succession  to  his  estate,  to  contribute  an  "  aid  "  in 
money  in  case  of  the  king's  capture  in  war,  or  the  knighthood 
of  the  king's  eldest  son,  or  the  marriage  of  his  eldest  daughter. 
An  heir  who  was  still  a  minor  passed  into  the  crown's  "ward- 
ship, and  all  profit  from  his  estate  went  for  the  time  to  the 
king.  If  the  estate  devolved  upon  an  heiress,  her  hand  was 
at  the  king's  disposal,  and  was  generally  sold  to  the  highest 
bidder.  Over  the  whole  face  of  the  land  most  manors  were 
burdened  with  their  own  "  customs/'  or  special  dues  to  the 
crown  :  and  it  was  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  and  re- 
cording these  that  William  sent  into  each  county  the  commis- 
sioners whose  inquiries  are  preserved  in  Domesday  Book.  A 
jury  empaneled  in  each  hundred  declared  on  oath  the  extent 
and  nature  of  each  estate,  the  names,  number,  condition  of  its 
inhabitants,  its  value  before  and  after  the  Conquest,  and  the 
sums  due  from  it  to  the  crown. 

William  found   another  check  on  the  aggressive  spirit  of 

the  feudal  baronage  in  his  organization  of  the  Church.     One 

The  Church  °f  h*8  earliest  acts  was  to  summon  Lanfranc  from 

of  the  Nor-  Normandy  to   aid   him    in   its   reform;  and  the 

maas<       deposition  of  Stigand,  which  raised  Lanfranc  to 

the  see  of  Canterbury,  was  followed  by  the  removal  of  most 

of  the  English  prelates  and  abbots,  and  by  the  appointment 

of  Norman  ecclesiastics  in  their  place.     The  new  archbishop 

did  much  to  restore  discipline,  and  William's  own  efforts 


THE  KOKMAN   CONQUEST.      1068   TO   1071.  109 

were  no  doubt  partly  directed  by  a  real  desire  for  the  religious 
improvement  of  his  realm.  "  In  choosing  abbots  and  bish- 
ops/' says  a  contemporary,  "he  considered  not  so  much 
men's  riches  or  power  as  their  holiness  and  wisdom.  He 
called  together  bishops  and  abbots  arid  other  wise  counsel- 
ors in  any  vacancy,  and  by  their  advice  inquired  very  care- 
fully who  was  the  best  and  wisest  man,  as  well  in  divine 
things  as  in  worldly,  to  rule  the  Churgh  of  God."  But 
honest  as  they  were,  the  king's  reforms  tended  directly  to 
the  increase  of  the  royal  power.  The  new  bishops  and  abbots 
were  cut  off  by  their  foreign  origin  from  the  flocks  they  ruled, 
while  their  popular  influence  was  lessened  by  the  removal  of 
ecclesiastical  cases  from  shire  or  hundred-court,  where  the 
bishop  had  sat  side  by  side  with  the  civil  magistrate,  to  the 
separate  court  of  the  bishop  himself.  The  change  was  preg- 
nant with  future  trouble  to  the  crown  ;  but  for  the  moment 
it  told  mainly  in  removing  the  bishop  from  his  traditional 
contract  with  the  popular  assembly,  and  in  effacing  the 
memory  of  the  original  equality  of  the  religious  with  the  civil 
power.  The  dependence  of  the  Church  on  the  royal  power 
was  strictly  enforced.  Homage  was  exacted  from  bishop  as 
from  baron.  No  royal  tenant  could  be  excommunicated 
without  the  king's  leave.  No  synod  could  legislate  without 
his  previous  assent  and  subsequent  confirmation  of  its  decrees. 
No  papal  letters  could  be  received  within  the  realm  save  by 
his  permission.  William  firmly  repudiated  the  claims  which 
were  now  beginning  to  be  put  forward  by  the  court  of  Eome. 
When  Gregory  VII.  called  on  him  to  do  fealty  for  his 
realm,  the  king  sternly  refused  to  admit  the  claim.  "  Fealty 
I  have  never  willed  to  do,  nor  do  I  will  to  do  it  now.  I 
have  never  promised  it,  nor  do  I  find  that  my  predecessors 
did  it  to  yours." 

But  the  greatest  safeguard  of  the  crown  lay  in  the  wealth 
and  personal  power  of- the  kings.  Extensive  as  had  been  his 
grants  to  noble  and  soldier,  William  remained 
the  greatest  landowner  in  his  realm.  His  rigid 
exaction  of  feudal  dues  added  wealth  to  the  great 
Hoard  at  Winchester,  which  had  been  begun  by  the  spoil  of 
the  conquered.  But  William  found  a  more  ready  source  of 
revenue  in  the  settlement  of  the  Jewish  traders,  who  followed 
him  from  Normandy,  and  who  were  enabled  by  the  royal 


110  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

protection  to  establish  themselves  in  separate  quarters  or 
"  Jewries  "  of  the  chief  towns  of  England.  The  Jew  had  no 
right  or  citizenship  in  the  land  ;  the  Jewry  in  which  he  lived 
was,  like  the  king's  forest,  exempt  from  the  common  law. 
He  was  simply  the  king's  chattel,  and  his  life  arid  goods 
were  absolutely  at  the  king's  mercy.  But  he  was  too  valua- 
ble a  possession  to  be  lightly  thrown  away.  A  royal  justiciary 
secured  law  to  the  Jewish  merchant,  who  had  no  standing- 
ground  in  the  local  courts  ;  his  bonds  were  deposited  for 
safety  in  a  chamber  of  the  royal  palace  at  Westminster  ;  he 
was  protected  against  the  popular  hatred  in  the  free  exercise 
of  his  religion,  and  allowed  to  build  synagogues  and  to  direct 
his  own  ecclesiastical  affairs  by  means  of  a  chief  Rabbi. 
That  the  presence  of  the  Jew  was,  at  least  in  the  earlier 
years  of  his  settlement,  beneficial  to  the  kingdom  at  large 
there  can  be  little  doubt.  His  arrival  was  the  arrival  of  a 
capitalist ;  and  heavy  as  was  the  usury  he  necessarily  exacted 
in  the  general  insecurity  of  the  time,  his  loans  gave  an  im- 
pulse to  industry  such  as  England  had  never  felt  before. 
The  century  which  followed  the  Conquest  witnessed  an  out- 
burst of  architectural  energy  which  covered  the  land  with 
castles  and  cathedrals  ;  but  castle  and  cathedral  alike  owed 
their  existence  to  the  loans  of  the  Jew.  His  own  example 
gave  a  new  direction  to  domestic  architecture.  The  build- 
ings which,  as  at  Lincoln  and  S.  Edmundsbury,  still  retain 
their  title  of  "  Jews'  Houses"  were  almostthe  first  houses  of 
stone  which  superseded  the  mere  hovels  of  the  English 
burghers.  Nor  was  the  influence  of  the  Jews  simply  in- 
dustrial. Through  their  connection  with  the  Jewish  schools 
in  Spain  and  the  East  they  opened  a  way  for  the  revival  of 
physical  science.  A  Jewish  medical  school  seems  to  have 
existed  at  Oxford  ;  Roger  Bacon  himself  studied  under 
English  Rabbis.  But  to  the  kings  the  Jew  was  simply  an 
engine  of  finance.  The  wealth  which  his  industry  accumu- 
lated was  wrung  from  him  whenever  the  Crown  had  need, 
and  torture  and  imprisonment  were  resorted  to  if  milder 
entreaties  failed.  It  was  the  gold  of  the  Jew  that  filled  the 
royal  exchequer  at  the  outbreak  of  war  or  of  revolt.  It  was 
in  the  Hebrew  coffers  that  the  Norman  kings  found  strength 
to  hold  their  baronage  at  bay. 


THE   ENGLISH   REVIVAL.      1071   TO   1127.  Ill 


Section  VI.  —The  English  Revival,  1071—1127. 

[Authorities.— Orderic  and  the  English  chroniclers,  as  before.  Eadmer,  a 
monk  of  Canterbury,  in  his  "  Historia  Novorum  "  and  his  "  Life  of  Anselm,"  is 
the  chief  aourceof  information  for  the  reign  of  William  the  Second.  William  of 
Malmesbury  and  Henry  of  Huntingdon  are  both  contemporary  authorities  during 
that  of  Henry  the  First  :  the  latter  remains  a  brief  but  accurate  annalist ;  the 
former  is  the  leader  of  a  new  historic  school,  who  treat  English  events  as  part  of 
the  history  of  the  world,  and  emulate  classic  models  by  a  more  philosophical  ar- 
rangement of  their  materials.  See  for  them  the  opening  section  of  the  next 
chapter.  On  the  early  history  of  our  towns  the  reader  may  gain  something  from 
Mr  Thompson's  "  English  Municipal  History  "  (London,  1857) ;  more  from  the 
"  Charter  Rolls  "  (published  by  the  Record  Commissioners) ;  for  S.  Edmundsbury 
see  "  Chronicle  of  Jocelynde  Brakelond  "  (Camden  Society).  The  records  of  the 
Cistercian  Abbeys  of  Yorkshire  in  "  Dugdale's  Monasticon."  illustrate  the  relig- 
ious revival.  Henry's  administration  is  admirably  explained  for  the  first  time  by 
Dr.  Stubbs  in  his  "  Constitutional  History."] 

The  Conquest  was  hardly  over  when  the  struggle  between 
the  baronage  and  the  crown  began.  The  wisdom  of  William's 
policy  in  the  destruction  of  the  great  earldoms  wiiiiam 
which  had  overshadowed  the  throne  was  shown  in  and  the 
an  attempt  at  their  restoration  made  by  Roger,  the  barons, 
son  of  his  minister  William  Fitz-Osbern,  and  by  the  Breton, 
Ealf  de  Gauder,  whom  the  King  had  rewarded  for  his  services 
at  Senlac  with  the  earldom  of  Norfolk.  The  rising  was  quickly 
suppressed, Roger  thrown  into  prison,  and  Ralf  driven  over  sea  ; 
but  the  intrigues  of  the  baronage  soon  found  another  leader 
in  William's  half-brother,  the  Bishop  of  Bayeux.  Under  pre- 
tense of  aspiring  by  arms  to  the  papacy,  Bishop  Odo  collqcted 
money  and  men,  but  the  treasure  was  at  once  seized  by  the 
royal  officers,  and  the  bishop  arrested  in  the  midst  of  the 
court.  Even  at  the  king's  bidding  no  officer  would  venture  to 
seize  on  a  prelate  of  the  Church  ;  it  was  with  his  own  hands 
that  William  was  forced  to  effect  his  arrest.  "I  arrest  not 
the  Bishop,  but  the  Earl  of  Kent,"  laughed  the  Conqueror,  and 
Odo  remained  a  prisoner  till  William's  death.  It  was  in  fact 
this  vigorous  personality  of  William  which  proved  the  chief 
safeguard  of  his  throne.  "Stark  he  was,"  says  the  English 
chronicler,  "  to  men  that  withstood  him.  Earls  that  did 
aught  against  his  bidding  he  cast  into  bonds  ;  bishops  he 
stripped  of  their  bishopricks,  abbots  of  their  abbacies.  He 
spared  not  his  own  brother  :  first  he  was  in  the  land,  but  the 
king  cast  him  into  bondage.  If  a  man  would  live  and  hold 
his  lands,  need  it  were  that  he  followed  the  king's  will," 


112  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

But  stern  as  his  rule  was,  it  gave  peace  to  the  land.  Even 
amidst  the  sufferings  which  necessarily  sprang  from  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  Conquest  itself,  from  the  erection  of  castles, 
or  the  enclosure  of  forests,  or  the  exactions  which  built  up 
the  great  hoard  at  Winchester,  Englishmen  were  unable  to 
forget  "  the  good  peace  he  made  in  the  land,  so  that  a  man 
mio-ht  fare  over  his  realm  with  a  bosom  full  of  gold." 
Strange  touches  of  a  humanity  far  in  advance  of  his  age  con- 
trasted with  the  general  temper  of  his  government.  One  of 
the  strongest  traits  in  his  character  was  his  aversion  to  shed 
blood  by  process  of  law ;  he  formally  abolished  the  punish- 
ment of  death,  and  only  a  single  execution  stains  the  annals 
of  his  reign.  An  edict  yet  more  honorable  to  him  put  an  end 
to  the  slave-trade  which  had  till  then  been  carried  on  at  the 
port  of  Bristol.  The  pitiless  warrior,  the  stern  and  awful 
king  was  a  tender  and  faithful  husband,  an  affectionate 
father.  The  lonely  silence  of  his  bearing  broke  into  gra- 
cious converse  with  pure  and  sacred  souls  like  Anselm.  If 
William  was  "stark  "to  rebel  and  baron,  men  noted  that 
he  was  "  mild  to  those  that  loved  God." 

In  power  as  in  renown  the  Conqueror  towered  high  above 

his  predecessors  on  the  throne.     The  fear  of  the  Danes,  which 

The  English  ^ia(^  so  l°n£  hung  ^e  a  thunder-cloud  over  Eng- 

and  their  land,  passed  away  before  the  host  which  William 
kings-  gathered  to  meet  a  great  armament  assembled  by 
King  Cnut.  A  mutiny  dispersed  the  Danish  fleet,  and  the 
murder  of  its  king  removed  all  peril  from  the  north.  Scot- 
land, already  humbled  by  William's  invasion,  was  bridled  by 
the  erection  of  a  strong  fortress  at  Newcastle-upon-Tyne  ;  and 
after  penetrating  with  his  army  to  the  heart  of  Wales,  the 
king  commenced  its  systematic  reduction  by  settling  barons 
along  its  frontier.  It  was  not  till  his  closing  years  that  his 
unvarying  success  was  disturbed  by  a  rebellion  of  his  son 
Robert  and  a  quarrel  with  France  ;  as  he  rode  down  the  steep 
street  of  Mantes,  which  he  had  given  to  the  flames,  his  horse 
stumbled  among  the  embers,  and  William,  flung  heavily 
against  his  saddle,  was  borne  home  to  Eouen  to  die.  The 
sound  of  the  minster  bell  woke  him  at  dawn  as  he  lay  in  the 
convent  of  St.  Gervais,  overlooking  the  city — it  was  the  hour  of 
prime — and  stretching  out  his  hands  in  prayer  the  Conqueror 
passed  quietly  away.  With  him  passed  the  terror  which  had 


THE   ENGLISH   KEVIVAL.      1071   TO   1127.  113 

held  the  barouage  in  awe,  while  the  severance  of  his  domin- 
ions roused  their  hopes  of  successful  resistance  to  the  stern 
rule  beneath  which  they  had  bowed.  William  bequeathed 
Normandy  to  his  eldest  son  Eobert  ;  William,  his  second 
son,  hastened  with  his  father's  ring  to  England,  where  the 
influence  of  Lanfranc  at  once  secured  him  the  crown.  The 
baronage  seized  the  opportunity  to  rise  in  arms  under  pretext 
of  supporting  the  claims  of  Robert,  whose  weakness  of  char- 
acter gave  full  scope  for  the  growth  of  feudal  independence, 
and  Bishop  Odo  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  the  revolt. 
The  new  king  was  thrown  almost  wholly  on  the  loyalty  of  his 
English  subjects.  But  the  national  stamp  which  William 
had  given  to  his  kingship  told  at  once.  Bishop  Wulfstan  of 
Worcester,  the  one  surviving  bishop  of  English  blood,  defeated 
the  insurgents  in  the  west ;  while  the  king,  summoning  the 
freemen  of  country  and  town  to  his  host  under  pain  of  being 
branded  as  "  nithing "  or  worthless,  advanced  with  a  large 
force  against  Rochester,  where  the  barons  were  concentrated. 
A  plague  which  broke  out  among  the  garrison  forced  them 
te  capitulate,  and  as  the  prisoners  passed  through  the  royal 
army,  cries  of  "gallows  and  cord  "  burst  from  the  English 
ranks.  At  a  later  period  of  his  reign  a  conspiracy  was  or- 
ganized to  place  Stephen  of  Albemarle,  a  near  cousin  of  the 
royal  house,  upon  the  throne ;  but  the  capture  of  Robert 
Mowbray,  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  who  had  placed  him- 
self at  its  head,  and  the  imprisonment  and  exile  of  his  fel- 
low-conspirators, again  crushed  the  hopes  of  the  baronage. 

While  the  spirit  of  national  patriotism  rose  to  life  again  in 
this  struggle  of  the  crown  against  the  baronage,  the  boldness 
of  a  single  ecclesiastic  revived  a  national  opposi-     r^  Red 
tion  to  the  mere  administrative  despotism  which    King  and 
now  pressed  heavily  on  the  land.     If  William  the  the  Cnurch- 
Red  inherited  much  of  his  father's  energy  as  well   as  his 
policy  towards  the   conquered  English,  he  inherited   none 
of   his  moral  grandeur.     His   profligacy  and    extravagance 
soon  exhausted  the  royal  hoard,  and  the  death  of  Lanfranc 
left  him  free  to  fill  it  at  the  expense  of  the  Church.     During 
the  vacancy  of  a  see  or  abbey  its  revenues  went  to  the  royal 
treasury,  and  so  steadily  did  William  refuse  to  appoint  suc- 
cessors to  the  prelates  whom  death  removed,  that  at  the 
close  of  his  reign  one  archbishopric,  four  bishopricks,  and 


114  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

eleven  abbeys  were  found  to  be  without  pastors.  The  see  of 
Canterbury  itself  remained  vacant  till  a  dangerous  illness 
frightened  the  king  into  the  promotion  of  Anselm,  who 
happened  at  the  time  to  be  in  England  on  the  business  of  his 
house.  The  Abbot  of  Bee  was  dragged  to  the  royal  couch 
and  the  cross  forced  into  his  hands,  but  William  had  no 
sooner  recovered  from  his  sickness  than  he  found  himself 
face  to  face  with  an  opponent  whose  meek  and  loving  temper 
rose  into  firmness  and  grandeur  when  it  fronted  the  tyranny 
of  the  king.  The  Conquest,  as  we  have  seen,  had  robbed  the 
Church  of  all  moral  power  as  the  representative  of  the  higher 
national  interests  against  a  brutal  despotism  by  placing  it  in 
a  position  of  mere  dependence  on  the  crown ;  and  though 
the  struggle  between  William  and  the  archbishop  turned  for 
the  most  part  on  points  which  have  110  direct  bearing  on  our 
history,  the  boldness  of  Anselm's  attitude  not  only  broke  the 
tradition  of  ecclesiastical  servitude,  but  mfused  through  the 
nation  at  large  a  new  spirit  of  independence.  The  real 
character  of  the  contest  appears  in  the  Primate's  answer, 
when  his  remonstrances  against  the  lawless  exactions  from 
the  Church  were  met  by  a  demand  for  a  present  on  his  own 
promotion,  and  his  first  offer  of  five  hundred  pounds  was 
contemptuously  refused.  "  Treat  me  as  a  free  man,"  Anselm 
replied,  "  and  I  devote  myself  and  all  that  I  have  to  your 
service,  but  if  you  treat  me  as  a  slave  you  shall  have  neither 
me  nor  mine/'  A  burst  of  the  Red  King's  fury  drove  the 
archbishop  from  court,  and  he  finally  decided  to  quit  the 
country,  but  his  example  had  not  been  lost,  and  the  close  of 
William's  reign  found  a  new  spirit  of  freedom  in  England 
with  which  the  greatest  of  the  Conqueror's  sons  was  glad  to 
make  terms. 

As  a  soldier  the  Red  King  was  little  inferior  to  his  father. 
Normandy  had  been  pledged  to  him  by  his  brother  Robert  in 

England  exchange  for  a  sum  which  enabled  the  duke  to 
and  Henry  march  in  the  first  Crusade  for  the  delivery  of  the 

the  First.  gojy  ]jan(j)  an(j  a  rebellion  at  Le  Mans  was  sub- 
dued by  the  fierce  energy  with  which  William  flung  himself 
at  the  news  of  it  into  the  first  boat  he  found,  and  crossed  the 
Channel  in  face  of  a  storm.  "  Kings  never  drown,"  he 
replied  contemptuously  to  the  remonstrances  of  his  followers. 
Homage  was  again  wrested  from  Malcolm  by  a  march  to  the 


THE   ENGLISH    REVIVAL.      1071   TO   1127.  llf> 

Firth  of  Forth,  and  the  subsequent  death  of  that  king  threw 
Scotland  into  a  disorder  which  enabled  an  array  under  Eadgar 
yEtheling  to  establish  Eadgar,  the  sou  of  Margaret,  as  an 
English  feudatory  on  the  throne.  In  Wales  William  was 
less  triumphant,  and  the  terrible  losses  inflip  ted  on  the  heavy 
Norman  cavalry  in  the  fastnesses  of  Snowdon  forced  him  to 
fall  back  on  the  slower  but  wiser  policy  of  the  Conqueror. 
Triumph  and  defeat  alike  ended  in  a  strange  and  tragical 
close  ;  the  Red  King  was  found  dead  by  peasants  in  a  glade 
of  the  New  Forest,  with  the  arrow  either  of  a  hunter  or  an 
assassin  in  his  breast.  Robert  was  still  on  his  return  from 
the  Holy  Land,  where  his  bravery  had  redeemed  much  of  his 
earlier  ill-fame,  and'the  English  crown  was  at  once  seized  by 
his  younger  brother  Henry,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the 
baronage,  who  clung  to  the  Duke  of  Normandy  and  the 
union  of  their  estates  on  both  sides  the  Channel  under  a 
single  ruler.  Their  attitude  threw  Henry,  as  it  had  thrown 
Rufus,  on  the  support  of  the  English,  and  the  two  great 
measures  which  followed  his  coronation,  his  grant  of  a 
charter,  and  his  marriage  with  Matilda,  mark  the  new  rela- 
tion which  was  thus  brought  about  between  the  people  and 
their  king.  Henry's  Charter  is  important,  not  merely  as  a 
direct  precedent  for  the  Great  Charter  of  John,  but  as  the 
first  limitation  which  had  been  imposed  on  the  despotism 
established  by  the  Conquest.  The  "  evil  customs"  by  which 
the  Red  King  had  enslaved  and  plundered  the  Church  were 
explicitly  renounced  in  it,  the  unlimited  demands  made  by 
both  the  Conqueror  and  his  son  on  the  baronage  exchanged 
for  customary  fees,  while  the  rights  of  the  people  itself, 
though  recognized  more  vaguely,  were  riot  forgotten.  The 
barons  were  held  to  do  justice  to  their  under-tenants  and  to 
renounce  tyrannical  exactions  from  them,  the  king  promis- 
ing to  restore  order  and  the  "law  of  Eadward,"  the  old  con- 
stitution of  the  realm,  with  the  changes  which  his  father 
had  introduced.  His  marriage  gave  a  significance  to  these 
promises  which  the  meanest  English  peasant  could  under- 
stand. Edith,  or  Matilda,  was  the  daughter  of  King  Mal- 
colm of  Scotland  and  of  Margaret,  the  sister  of  Eadgar 
^Etlieling.  She  had  been  brought  up  in  the  nunnery-  of 
Romsey  by  its  abbess,  her  aunt  Christina,  and  the  veil  which 
she  had  taken  there  formed  an  obstacle  to  her  union  with  the 


116  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

king  which  was  only  removed  by  the  wisdom  of  Auselm. 
The  archbishop's  recall  had  been  one  of  Henry's  first  acts 
after  his  accession,  and  Matilda  appeared  before  his  court  to 
tell  her  tale  in  words  of  passionate  earnestness.  She  had 
been  veiled  in  her  childhood,  she  asserted,  only  to  save 
her  from  the  insults  of  the  rude  soldiery  who  infested  the 
land,  had  flung  the  veil  from  her  again  and  again,  and 
had  yielded  at  last  to  the  unwomanly  taunts,  the  actual 
blows  of  her  aunt.  "As  often  as  I  stood  in  her  presence," 
the  girl  pleaded,  "  I  wore  the  veil,  trembling  as  I  wore  it 
with  indignation  and  grief.  But  as  soon  as  I  could  get  out 
of  her  sight  I  used  to  snatch  it  from  my  head,  fling  it  on  the 
ground,  and  trample  it  under  foot.  That  was  the  way,  and 
none  other,  in  which  I  was  veiled."  Anselm  at  once  declared 
her  free  from  conventual  bonds,  and  the  shout  of  the  English 
multitude  when  he  set  the  crown  on  Matilda's  brow  drowned 
the  murmur  of  Churchman  or  of  baron.  The  taunts  of  the 
Norman  nobles,  who  nicknamed  the  king  and  his  spouse 
"  Godric  and  Godgifu,"  were  lost  in  the  joy  of  the  people  at 
large.  For  the  first  time  since  the  Conquest  an  English 
sovereign  sat  on  the  English  throne.  The  blood  of  Cerdic  and 
Alfred  was  to  blend  itself  with  that  of  Hrolf  and  the  Con- 
queror. Henceforth  it  was  impossible  that  the  two  peoples 
should  remain  parted  from  each  other  ;  so  quick  indeed  was 
their  union  that  the  very  name  of  Norman  had  passed  away 
in  half  a  century,  and  at  the  accession  of  Henry's  grandson 
it  was  impossible  to  distinguish  between  the  descendants 
of  the  conquerors  and  those  of  the  conquered  at  Senlac. 

We  can  dimly  trace  the  progress  of  this  blending  of  the 
two  races  together  in  the  case  of  the  burgher  population  in 
the  towns. 

One  immediate  result  of  the  Conquest  had  been  a  great  im- 
migration into  England  from  the  Continent.     A  peaceful 
invasion  of  the  industrial  and  trading  classes  of 
town!  S    Normandy  followed  quick  on  the  conquest  of  the 
Norman   soldiery.     Every   Norman  noble   as  he 
quartered  himself  upon  English  lands,  every  Norman  abbot 
as  he  entered  his  English  cloister,  gathered  French  artists  or 
.French  domestics  around  his  new  castle  or  his  new  church. 
Around  the  Abbey  of  Battle,  for   instance,  which  "William 
had  founded  on  the  site  of  his  great  victory,  "Gilbert  the 


THE   ENGLISH   REVIVAL.      1071    TO    1127.  117 

foreigner,  Gilbert  the  Weaver,  Benet  the  Steward,  Hugh  the 
Secretary,  Baldwin  the  Tailor,"  mixed  with  the  English 
tenantry.  More  especially  was  this  the  case  with  the  capital. 
Long  before  the  landing  of  William,  the  Normans  had  had 
mercantile  establishments  in  London.  Such  settlements  how- 
ever naturally  formed  nothing  more  than  a  trading  colony  ; 
but  London  had  no  sooner  submitted  to  the  Conqueror  than 
"  many  of  the  citizens  of  Rouen  and  Caen  passed  over  thither, 
preferring  to  be  dwellers  in  this  city,  inasmuch  as  it  was  fit- 
ter for  their  trading  and  better  stored  with  the  merchandise 
in  which  they  were  wont  to  traffic."  In  some  cases,  as  at 
Norwich,  the  French  colony  isolated  itself  in  a  separate  French 
town,  side  by  side  with  the  English  borough.  But  in  London 
it  seems  to  have  taken  at  once  the  position  of  a  governing 
class.  Gilbert  Beket,  the  father  of  the  famous  archbishop, 
was  believed  in  later  days  to  have  been  one  of  the  portreeves 
of  London,  the  predecessors  of  its  mayors  ;  he  held  in  Stephen's 
time  a  large  property  in  houses  within  the  walls,  and  a  proof 
of  his  civic  importance  was  preserved  in  the  annual  visit  of 
each  newly-elected  chief  magistrate  to  his  tomb  in  the  little 
chapel  which  he  had  founded  in  the  churchyard  of  S.  Paul's. 
Yet  Gilbert  was  one  of  the  Norman  strangers  who  followed 
in  the  wake  of  the  Conqueror  ;  he  was  by  birth  a  burgher  of 
Rouen,  as  his  wife  was  of  a  burgher  family  from  Caen. 

It  was  partly  to  this  infusion  of  foreign  blood,  partly  no 
doubt  to  the  long  internal  peace  and  order  secured  by  the 
Norman  rule,  that  the  English  towns  owed  the  wealth 
and  importance  to  which  they  attained  during  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  First.  In  the  silent  growth  and  elevation  of  the 
English  people  the  boroughs  lad  the  way  :  unnoticed  and 
despised  by  prelate  and  noble  they  had  alone  preserved  or 
won  back  again  the  full  tradition  of  Teutonic  liberty.  The 
rights  of  self-government,  of  free  speech  in  free  meetings,  of 
equal  justice  by  one's  equals,  were  brought  safely  across 
the  ages  of  tyranny  by  the  burghers  and  shopkeepers  of  tin- 
towns.  In  the  quiet,  quaintly-named  streets,  in  town-mead 
and  market-place,  in  the  lord's  mill  beside  the  stream,  in  the 
bell  that  swung  out  its  summons  to  the  crowded  borough- 
mote,  in  merchant-gild  and  church-gild  and  craft-gild,  lay 
the  life  of  Englishmen  who  were  doing  more  than  knight 
and  baron  to  make  England  what  she  is,  the  life  of  their 


118  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

home  and  their  trade,  of  their  sturdy  battle  with  oppression, 
their  steady,  ceaseless  struggle  for  right  and  freedom.  It  is 
difficult  to  trace  the  steps  by  which  borough  after  borough 
won  its  freedom.  The  bulk  of  them  were  situated  in  the 
royal  demesne,  and,  like  other  tenants,  their  customary  rents 
were  collected  and  justice  administered  by  a  royal  officer. 
Amongst  our  towns  London  stood  chief,  and  the  charter 
which  Henry  granted  it  became  the  model  for  the  rest.  The 
king  yielded  the  citizens  the  right  of  justice  :  every  towns- 
man could  claim  to  be  tried  by  his  fellow-townsmen  in  the 
town-court  or  hustings,  whose  sessions  took  place  every 
week.  They  were  subject  only  to  the  old  English  trial  by 
oath,  and  exempt  from  the  trial  by  battle  which  the  Normans 
had  introduced.  Their  trade  was  protected  from  toll  or 
exaction  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land.  The 
king  however  still  nominated  in  London  as  elsewhere  the 
portreeve,  or  magistrate  of  the  town,  nor  were  the  citizens 
as  yet  united  together  in  a  commune  or  corporation  ;  but  an 
imperfect  civic  organization  existed  in  the  "wards"  or 
quarters  of  the  town,  each  governed  by  its  own  alderman, 
and  in  the  "  gilds  "  or  voluntary  associations  of  merchants 
or  traders  which  ensured  order  and  mutual  protection  for 
their,  members.  Loose  too  as  these  bonds  may  seem,  they 
were  drawn  firmly  together  by  the  older  English  traditions  of 
freedom  which  the  towns  preserved.  In  London,  for  instance, 
the  burgesses  gathered  in  town-mote  when  the  bell  swung  out 
from  S.  Paul's  to  deliberate  freely  on  their  own  affairs  under 
the  presidency  of  their  aldermen.  Here  too  they  mustered  in 
arms  if  danger  threatened  the  city,  and  delivered  the  city- 
banner  to  their  captain,  the  Norman  baron  Fitz- Walter, to  lead 
them  against  the  enemy.  Few  boroughs  had  as  yet  attained  to 
power  such  as  this,  but  charter  after  charter  during  Henry's 
reign  raised  the  townsmen  of  boroughs  from  mere  traders, 
wholly  at  the  mercy  of  their  lord,  into  customary  tenants,  who 
had  purchased  their  freedom  by  a  fixed  rent,  regulated  their  own 
trade,  and  enjoyed  exemption  from  all  but  their  own  justice. 
The  advance  of  towns  which  had  grown  up  not  on  the 
royal  domain  but  around  abbey  or  castle  was  slower  and  more 
8  Edmunds-  difficult-  Tne  stoi7  of  S.  Edmundsbury  shows 
bury.n  S"  h°w  gradual  was  the  transition  from  pure  serfage 
to  an  imperfect  freedom.  Much  that  had  been 


THE   ENGLISH   KEVIVAL.      1071    TO    1127.  11 H 

plow-land  in  the  time  of  the  Confessor  was  covered  with 
houses  under  the  Norman  rule.  The  building  of  the  great 
abbey-church  drew  its  craftsmen  and  masons  to  mingle  with 
the  plowmen  and  reapers  of  the  abbot's  domain.  The 
troubles  of  the  time  helped  here  as  elsewhere  the  progress  of 
the  town  ;  serfs,  fugitives  from  justice  or  their  lord,  the 
trader,  the  Jew,  naturally  sought  shelter  under  the  strong 
hand  of  S.  Edmund.  But  the  settlers  were  wholly  at  the 
abbot's  mercy.  Not  a  settler  but  was  bound  to  pay  his 
pence  to  the  abbot's  treasury,  to  plow  a  rood  of  his  land, 
to  reap  in  his  harvest- field,  to  fold  his  sheep  in  the  abbey 
folds,  to  help  bring  the  annual  catch  of  eels  from  the  abbey 
waters.  Within  the  four  crosses  that  bounded  the  abbot's 
domain  land  and  water  were  his  ;  the  cattle  of  the  townsmen 
paid  for  their  pasture  on  the  common  ;  if  the  fullers  refused 
the  loan  of  their  cloth,  the  cellarer  would  refuse  the  use  of 
the  stream,  and  seize  their  cloths  wherever  he  found  them. 
No  toll  might  be  levied  from  tenants  of  the  abbey  farms, 
and  customers  had  to  wait  before  shop  and  stall  till  the 
buyers  of  the  Abbot  had  had  the  pick  of  the  market.  There 
was  little  chance  of  redress,  for  if  burghers  complained  in 
folk-mote,  it  was  before  the  abbot's  officers  that  its  meeting 
was  held  ;  if  they  appealed  to  the  alderman,  he  was  the 
abbot's  nominee,  and  received  the  horn,  the  symbol  of  his 
office,  at  the  abbot's  hands. 

Like  all  the  greater  revolutions  of  society,  the  advance 
from  this  mere  serfage  was  a  silent  one ;  indeed  its  more 
galling  instances  of  oppression  seem  to  have  slipped  uncon- 
sciously away.  Some,  like  the  eel-fishing,  were  commuted 
for  an  easy  rent ;  others,  like  the  slavery  of  the  fullers  and 
the  toll  of  flax,  simply  disappeared.  By  usage,  by  omission, 
by  downright  forgetf  ulness,  here  by  a  little  struggle,  there  by 
a  present  to  a  needy  abbot,  the  town  won  freedom.  But 
progress  was  not  always  unconscious,  and  one  incident  in  the 
history  of  S.  Edmundsbury  is  remarkable,  not  merely  as 
indicating  the  advance  of  law,  but  yet  more  as  marking  the 
part  which  a  new  moral  sense  of  man's  right  to  equal  justice 
vras  to  play  in  the  general  advance  of  the  realm.  Rude 
as  the  borough  was,  it  had  preserved  its  right  of  meeting  in 
full  assembly  of  the  townsmen  for  government  and  law. 
Justice  was  administered  in  presence  of  the  burgesses,  and 


120  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  accused  acquitted  or  condemned  by  the  oath  of  his 
neighbors.  Without  the  borough  bounds  however  the 
system  of  the  Norman  judicature  prevailed  ;  and  the  rural 
tenants  who  did  suit  and  service  at  the  cellarer's  court  were 
subject  to  the  decision  of  the  trial  by  battle.  The  execution 
of  a  farmer  named  Ketel,  who  was  subject  to  this  feudal 
jurisdiction,  brought  the  two  systems  into  vivid  contrast. 
He  seems  to  have  been  guiltless  of  the  crime  laid  to  his 
charge,  but  the  duel  went  against  him,  and  he  was  hanged 
just  without  the  gates.  The  taunts  of  the  townsmen  woke 
his  fellow-farmers  to  a  sense  of  wrong.  "  Had  Ketel  been  a 
dweller  within  the  borough/'  said  the  burgesses,  "  he  would 
have  got  his  acquittal  from  the  oaths  of  his  neighbors,  as  our 
liberty  is  ;  "  and  even  the  monks  were  moved  to  a  decision 
that  their  tenants  should  enjoy  equal  liberty  and  justice  with 
the  townsmen.  The  franchise  of  the  town  was  extended  to 
the  rural  possessions  of  the  abbey  without  it ;  the  fanners 
"came  to  the  toll-house,  were  written  in  the  alderman's 
roll,  and  paid  the  town-penny." 

The  moral  revolution  which  events  like  this  indicate  was 
backed  by  a  religious  revival  which  forms  a  marked  feature 
in  the  reign  of  Henry  the  First.  Pious,  learned, 
iousTrevivai  an<^  energetic  as  the  bishops  of  William's  appoint- 
ment had  been,  they  were  not  Englishmen.  Till 
the  reign  of  Henry  the  First  no  Englishman  occupied  an 
English  see.  In  language,  in  manner,  in  sympathy,  the 
higher  clergy  were  completely  severed  from  the  lower  priest- 
hood and  the  people,  and  the  severance  went  far  to  paralyze  the 
constitutional  influence  of  the  Church.  Anselm  stood  alone 
against  Rufus,  and  when  Anselm  was  gone  no  voice  of  eccle- 
siastical freedom  broke  the  silence  of  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
First.  But  at  the  close  of  Henry's  reign  and  throughout 
that  of  Stephen,  England  was  stirred  by  the  first  of  those 
great  religious  movements  which  it  was  afterwards  to  experi- 
ence 'in  the  preaching  of  the  Friars,  the  Lollardism  of  Wyclif , 
the  Reformation,  the  Puritan  enthusiasm,  and  the  mission 
work  of  the  Wesleys.  Everywhere  in  town  and  countrymen 
banded  themselves  together  for  prayer  ;  hermits  flocked  to 
the  woods  ;  noble  and  churl  welcomed  the  austere  Cistercians, 
a  reformed  outshoot  of  the  Benedictine  order,  as  they  spread 
ovur  the  moors  and  forests  of  the  north,  A  new  spirit  ol 


THE   ENGLISH   REVIVAL.      1071   TO   1127.  121 

devotion  woke  the  slumber  of  the  religious  houses,  and  pene- 
trated alike  to  the  home  of  the  noble  Walter  de  1'Espec  at 
Rievaulx,  or  of  the  trader  Gilbert  Beket  in  Cheapside. 
London  took  its  full  share  in  the  revival.  The  city  was 
prond  of  its  religion,  its  thirteen  conventual  and  more  than 
a  hundred  parochial  churches,  The  new  impulse  changed 
its  very  aspect.  In  the  midst  of  the  city  Bishop  Richard 
busied  himself  with  the  vast  cathedral  church  of  S.  Paul 
which  Bishop  Maurice  had  begun ;  barges  came  up  the  river 
with  stone  from  Caen  for  the  great  arches  that  moved  the 
popular  wonder,  while  street  and  lane  were  being  leveled  to 
make  space  for  its  famous  churchyard.  Rahere,  the  king's 
minstrel,  raised  the  Priory  of  S.  Bartholomew  beside  Smith- 
field.  Alf  une  built  S.  Giles's  at  Cripplegate.  The  old  Eng- 
lish Cnichtenagild  surrendered  their  soke  of  Aldgate  as  a 
site  for  the  new  priory  of  Holy  Trinity.  The  tale  of  this 
house  paints  admirably  the  temper  of  the  citizens  at  the 
time.  Its  founder,  Prior  Norman,  had  built  church  and 
cloister  and  bought  books  and  vestments  in  so  liberal  a 
fashion  that  at  last  no  money  remained  to  buy  bread. 
The  canons  were  at  their  last  gasp  when  many  of  the  city 
folk,  looking  into  the  refectory  as  they  paced  round  the 
cloister  in  their  usual  Sunday  procession,  saw  the  tables  laid 
but  not  a  single  loaf  on  them.  "  Here  is  a  fine  set-out," 
cried  the  citizens,  "  but  where  is  the  bread  to  come  from  ?" 
The  women  present  vowed  to  bring  a  loaf  every  Sunday,  and 
there  was  soon  bread  enough  and  to  spare  for  the  priory  and 
its  priests.  We  see  the  strength  of  the  new  movement  in 
the  new  class  of  ecclesiastics  that  it  forced  on  the  stage  ; 
men  like  Anselm  or  John  of  Salisbury,  or  the  two  great  prel- 
ates who  followed  one  another  after  Henry's  death  in  the 
see  of  Canterbury,  Theobald  and  Thomas,  drew  whatever 
influence  they  wielded  from  a  belief  in  their  holiness  of  life 
and  unselfishness  of  aim.  The  paralysis  of  the  Church 
ceased  as  the  new  impulse  bound  the  prelacy  and  people  to- 
gether, and  its  action,  when  at  the  end  of  Henry's  reign  it 
started  into  a  power  strong  enough  to  save  England  from 
anarchy,  has  been  felt  in  our  history  ever  since. 

From  this  revival  of  English  feeling  Henry  himself  stood 
jealously  aloof;  but  the  enthusiasm  which  his  marriage  had 
excited  enabled  him  to  defy  the  claims  of  his  brother  and 


122  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  disaffection  of  his  nobles.  Robert  landed  at  Portsmouth 
to  find  himself  face  to  face  with  an  English  army  which  An- 
Henry's  selm's  summons  had  gathered  round  the  king; 
administra-  and  his  retreat  left  Henry  free  to  deal  sternly 
tion.  with  the  rebel  barons.  "Robert  of  Belesme, 
the  son  of  Roger  of  Montgomery,  was  now  their  chief  ;  but 
60,000  English  footmen  followed  the  king  through  the  rough 
passes  which  led  to  Shrewsbury,  and  an  early  surrender  alone 
saved  Robert's  life.  Master  of  his  own  realm  and  enriched 
by  the  confiscated  lands  of  the  revolted  baronage,  Henry 
crossed  into  Normandy,  where  the  misgovernment  of  Robert 
had  alienated  the  clergy  and  trades,  arid  where  the  outrages 
of  the  Norman  nobles  forced  the  more  peaceful  classes  to 
call  the  king  to  their  aid.  On  the  field  of  Tenchebray  his 
forces  met  those  of  the  duke,  and  a  decisive  English  victory 
on  Norman  soil  avenged  the  shame  of  Hastings.  The  con- 
quered duchy  became  a  dependency  of  the  English  crown, 
and  Henry's  energies  were  frittered  away  through  a  quarter 
of  a  century  in  crushing  its  revolts,  the  hostility  of  the  French, 
and  the  efforts  of  his  nephew,  William  the  son  of  Robert,  to 
regain  the  crown  which  his  father  had  lost  at  Tenchebray. 
In  England,  however,  all  was  peace.  The  vigorous  adminis- 
tration of  Henry  the  First  completed  in  fullest  detail  the 
system  of  government  which  the  Conqueror  had  sketched. 
The  vast  estates  which  had  fallen  to  the  crown  through  revolt 
and  forfeiture  were  granted  out  to  new  men  dependent  on  royal 
favor.  On  the  ruins  of  the  great  feudatories  whom  he  had 
crushed  the  king  built  up  a  class  of  lesser  nobles,  whom  the 
older  barons  of  the  Conquest  looked  down  on  in  scorn,  but  who 
formed  a  counterbalancing  force  and  furnished  a  class  of  use- 
ful administrators  whom  Henry  employed  as  his  sheriffs  and 
judges.  A  new  organization  of  justice  and  finance  bound  the 
kingdom  together  under  the  royal  administration.  The  clerks 
of  the  Royal  Chapel  were  formed  into  a  body  of  secretaries  or 
royal  ministers,  whose  head  bore  the  title  of  Chancellor. 
Above  them  stood  the  Justiciar,  or  lieutenant-general  of  the 
kingdom,  who  in  the  frequent  absence  of  the  king  acted  as 
Regent,  and  whose  staff,  selected  from  the  barons  connected 
with  the  royal  household,  were  formed  into  a  Supreme  Court 
of  the  realm.  The  King's  Court,  as  this  was  called,  perma- 
nently represented  the  whole  court  of  royal  vassals,  which  had 


THE  ENGLISH   REVIVAL.      1071    TO    1127. 

hitherto  been  summoned  thrice  in  the  year.  As  the  royal 
council,  it  revised  and  registered  laws,  and  its  "  counsel  and 
consent,"  though  merely  formal,  preserved  the  principle  of 
the  older  popular  legislation.  As  a  court  of  justice  it  formed 
the  highest  court  of  appeal  ;  it  could  call  up  any  suit  from 
a  lower  tribunal  on  the  application  of  a  suitor,  while  the 
union  of  several  sheriifdoms  under  some  of  its  members  con- 
nected it  closely  with  the  local  courts.  As  a  financial  body, 
its  chief  work  lay  in  the  assessment  and  collection  of  the 
revenue.  In  this  capacity  it  took  the  name  of  the  Court  of 
Exchequer  from  the  chequered  table,  much  like  a  chess-board, 
at  which  it  sat,  and  on  which  accounts  were  rendered.  In 
their  financial  capacity  its  justices  became  "barons  of  the 
Exchequer."  Twice  every  year  the  sheriff  of  each  county 
appeared  before  these  barons  and  rendered  the  sum  of  the 
fixed  rent  from  royal  domains,  the  Danegeld  or  land  tax,  the 
fines  of  the  local  courts,  the  feudal  aids  from  the  baronial 
estates,  which  formed  the  chief  part  of  the  royal  revenue. 
Local  disputes  respecting  these  payments  or  the  assessment 
of  the  town-rents  were  settled  by  a  detachment  of  barons 
from  the  court  who  made  the  circuit  of  the  shires,  and  whose 
fiscal  visitations  led  to  the  judicial  visitations,  the  "  judges' 
circuits,"  which  still  form  so  marked  a  feature  in  our  legal 
system. 

From  this  work  of  internal  reform  Henry's  attention  was 
called  suddenly  by  one  terrible  loss  to  the  question  of  the 
succession  to  the  throne.  His  son  William  "  the 
^Etheling,"  as  the  English  fondly  styled  the  child 
of  their  own  Matilda,  had  with  a  crowd  of  nobles 
accompanied  the  king  on  his  return  from  Normandy ;  but 
the  White  Ship  in  which  he  had  embarked  lingered  behind 
the  rest  of  the  royal  fleet  while  the  young  nobles,  excited 
with  wine,  hung  over  the  ship's  side  and  chased  away  with 
taunts  the  priest  who  came  to  give  the  customary  benedic- 
tion. At  last  the  guards  of  the  king's  treasure  pressed  the 
vessel's  departure,  and,  driven  by  the  arms  ot  fifty  rowers, 
it  swept  swiftly  out  to  sea.  All  at  once  the  ship's  side  struck 
on  a  rock  at  the  mouth  of  the  harbor,  and  in  an  instant  it 
sank  beneath  the  waves.  One  terrible  cry,  ringing  through 
the  stillness  of  the  night,  was  heard  by  the  royal  fleet  ;  but 
it  was  not  till  the  morning  that  the  fatal  news  reached  the 


124  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

king.  He  fell  unconscious  to  the  ground,  and  rose  never 
to  smile  again.  Henry  had  no  other  son,  and  the  whole 
circle  of  his  foreign  foes  closed  round  him  the  more  fiercely 
that  the  son  of  Kobert  was  now  his  natural  heir.  The  king 
hated  William,  while  he  loved  Matilda,  the  daughter  who 
still  remained  to  him,  who  had  been  married  to  the  Emperor 
Henry  the  Fifth,  and  whose  husband's  death  now  restored 
her  to  her  father.  He  recognized  her  as  his  heir,  though 
the  succession  of  a  woman  seemed  strange  to  the  feudal 
baronage  ;  nobles  and  priests  were  forced  to  swear  allegiance 
to  her  as  their  future  mistress,  and  Henry  affianced  her  to 
the  son  of  the  one  foe  he  really  feared,  Count  Fulk  of 
Anjou. 

Section  VII.— England  and  Anjou,  870—1154. 

[Authorities. —  The  chief  documents  for  Angevin  history  have  been  collected 
in  the  "  Chroniques  d1  Anjou,"  published  by  the  Historical  Society  of  France 
(Paris,  1856—1871).  The  best  known  of  these  is  the  "  Gesta  Consulum,"  a  compila- 
tion of  the  twelfth  century  (given  also  by  D'Achery,  "  Spicilegium,"  4to.  vol.  x. 
p.  534),  in  which  the  earlier  romantic  traditions  are  simply  dressed  up  into  his- 
torical shape  by  copious  quotations  from  the  French  historians.  Save  for  the 
reigns  of  Geoff  ry  Martel,  and  Fulk  of  Jerusalem,  it  is  nearly  valueless.  The  short 
autobiography  of  Fulk  Rechin  is  the  most  authentic  memorial  of  the  earlier 
Angevin  history  ;  and  much  can  be  gleaned  from  the  verbose  life  of  Geoff  ry  the 
Handsome  by  John  of  Marmoutier.  For  England,  Orderic  and  the  Chronicle  die 
out  in -the  midst  of  Stephen's  reign  ;  here,  too,  end  William  of  Malmesbury,  Hun- 
tingdon, the  "  Gesta  Stephani,"  a  record  in  great  detail  by  one  of  Stephen's 
clerks,  and  the  Hexham  Chroniclers,  who  are  most  valuable  for  its  opening  (pub- 
lished by  Mr.  Raine  for  the  Surtees  Society).  The  blank  in  our  historical  literature 
extends  over  the  first  years  of  Henry  the  Second.  The  lives  and  letters  of  Beket 
have  been  industriously  collected  and  published  by  Canon  Robertson  in  the  Rolls 
Series.] 

To  understand  the  history  of  England  under  its  Angevin 
rulers,  we  must  first  know  something  of  the  Angevins  them- 
selves.   The  character  and  the  policy  of  Henry  the 
The  Counts   o  111-  *        i       •  j 

of  Aniou     Second  and  his  sons  were  as  much  a  heritage  of 

their  race  as  the  broad  lands  of  Anjou.  The  for- 
tunes of  England  were  being  slowly  wrought  out  in  every 
incident  of  the  history  of  the  Counts,  as  the  descendants 
of  a  Breton  woodman  became  masters  not  of  Anjou  only,  but 
of  Touraine,  Maine,  and  Poitou,  of  Gascony  ana  Auvergnet 
of  Aquitaino  and  Normandy,  and  sovereigns  at  last  of  the 
great  realm  which  Normandy  had  won.  The  legend  of  the 
father  of  their  race  carries  us  back  to  the  times  of  our  own 
^Elfred,  when  the  Danes  were  ravaging  along  Loire  as  they 


ENGLAND   AND   ANJOU.      870   TO   1154.  125 

ravaged  along  Thames.  In  the  heart  of  the  Breton  border, 
in  the  debatable  land  between  France  and  Britanny,  dwelt 
Tortulf  the  Forester,  half-brigand,  half-hunter  as  the  gloomy 
days  went,  living  in  free  outlaw-fashion  in  the  woods  about 
Rennes.  Tortulf  had  learned  in  his  rough  forest  school  "  how 
to  strike  the  foe,  to  sleep  on  the  bare  ground,  to  bear  hunger 
and  toil,  summer's  heat  and  winter's  frost,  how  to  fear  noth- 
ing save  ill-fume."  Following  King  Charles  the  Bald  in  his 
struggle  with  the  Danes,  the  woodman  won  broad  lands  along 
Loire,  and  his  son  Ingelger,  who  had  swept  the  northmen 
from  Touraine  and  the  land  to  the  west,  which  they  had 
burned  and  wasted  into  a  vast  solitude,  became  the  first 
Count  of  Anjou.  But  the  tale  of  Tortulf  and  Ingelger  is  a 
mere  creation  of  some  twelfth  century  jongleur,  and  the 
earliest  Count  whom  history  recognizes  is  Fulk  the  Red. 
Fulk  attached  himself  to  the  Dukes  of  France  who  were  now 
drawing  nearer  to  the  throne,  and  received  from  them  in 
guerdon  the  county  of  Anjou.  The  story  of  his  son  is  a  story 
of  peace,  breaking  like  a  quiet  idyl  the  war-storms  of  his 
house.  Alone  of  his  race  Fulk  the  Good  waged  no  wars  : 
his  delight  was  to  sit  in  the  choir  of  Tours  and  to  be  called 
"  Canon."  One  Martinmas  eve  Fulk  was  singing  there  in 
clerkly  guise  when  the  king,  Lewis  d'Outremer,  entered  the 
church.  "  He  sings  like  a  priest/'  laughed  the  king,  as  his 
nobles  pointed  mockingly  to  the  figure  of  the  Count-Canon  ; 
but. Fulk  was  ready  with  his  reply.  " Know,  my  lord/' 
wrote  the  Count  of  Anjon,  "  that  a  king  unlearned  is  a 
crowned  ass."  Fulk  was  in  fact  no  priest,  but  a  busy  ruler, 
governing,  enforcing  peace,  and  carrying  justice  to  every 
corner  of  the  wasted  land.  To  him  alone  of  his  race  men 
gave  the  title  of  "  the  Good." 

Himself  in  character  little  more  than  a  bold  dashing  sol- 
dier, Fulk's  son,  Geoffry  Gray-gown,  sank  almost  into  a  vassal 
of  his  powerful  neighbors,  the  Counts  of  Blois 
and  Champagne.  The  vassalage  was  roughly 
shaken  off  by  his  successor.  Fulk  Nerra,  Fulk 
the  Black,  is  the  greatest  of  the  Angevins,  the  first  in  whom 
we  can  trace  that  marked  type  of  character  which  their  house 
was  to  preserve  with  a  fatal  constancy  through  two  hundred 
years.  He  was  without  natural  affection.  In  his  youth  he 
burnt  a  wife  at  the  stake,  arid  legend  told  how  he  led  her  to 


126  HISTORY    OF    THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

her  doom  decked  out  in  his  gayest  attire.  In  his  old  age  he 
waged  his  bitterest  war  against  his  son,  and  exacted  from 
him  when  vanquished  a  humiliation  which  men  reserved  for 
the  deadliest  of  their  foes.  "  You  are  conquered,  you  are 
conquered!"  shouted  the  old  man  in  fierce  exultation,  as 
Geoffry,  bridled  and  saddled  like  a  beast  of  burden,  crawled 
for  pardon  to  his  father's  feet.  In  Fulk  first  appeared  the 
low  type  of  superstition  which  startled  even  superstitious 
ages  in  the  early  Plantagenets.  Robber  as  he  was  of  Church 
lands,  and  contemptuous  of  ecclesiastical  censures,  the  fear 
of  the  judgment  drove  Fulk  to  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  Bare- 
foot and  with  the  strokes  of  the  scourge  falling  heavily  on 
his  shoulders,  the  Count  had  himself  dragged  by  a  halter 
through  the  streets  of  Jerusalem,  and  courted  the  doom  of 
martyrdom  by  his  wild  outcries  of  penitence.  He  rewarded 
the  fidelity  of  Herbert  of  Le  Mans,  whose  aid  saved  him  from 
utter  ruin,  by  entrapping  him  into  captivity  and  robbing 
him  of  his  lands.  He  secured  the  terrified  friendship  of  the 
French  king  by  despatching  twelve  assassins  to  cut  down  be- 
fore his  eyes  the  minister  who  had  troubled  it.  Familiar  as 
the  age  was  with  treason  and  rapine  and  blood,  it  recoiled 
from  the  cool  cynicism  of  his  crimes,  and  believed  the  wrath 
of  Heaven  to  have  revealed  against  the  union  of  the  worst 
forms  of  evil  in  Fulk  the  Black.  But  neither  the  wrath 
of  Heaven  nor  the  curses  of  men  broke  with  a  single  mishap 
the  fifty  years  of  his  success. 

At  his  accession  Anjou  was  the  least  important  of  the 
greater  provinces  of  France.     At  his  death  in  1040  it  stood, 
The  great-   ^  n°t  in  extent,  at  least  in  real  power,  first  among 
ness  of      them  all.     Cool-headed,  clear-sighted,  quick  to  re- 
MJOU.      solve,  quicker  to  strike,   Fulk's  career  was    one 
long  series  of  victories  over  all  his  rivals.     He  was  a  consum- 
mate general,  and  he  had  the  gift  of  personal  bravery,  which 
was  denied  to  some  of  his  greatest  descendants     There  was  a 
moment  in  the  first  of  his  battles   when  the  day  seemed  lost 
for  Anjou  ;  a  feigned  retreat  of  the  Bretons  had  drawn  the 
Angevin  horsemen  into  a  line  of  hidden  pitfalls,  and  the  Count 
himself  was  flung  heavily  to  the  ground.      Dragged  from  the 
medley  of  men  and  horses  he  swept  down  almost  singly  on 
the  foe   "  as  a  storm-wind  "  (so  rang  the  ptean  of  the  Ange- 
vins)   " sweeps  down  on  the  thick  corn-rows,"  and  the  field 


ENGLAND   AND   ANJOU.      870   TO   1154.  127 

was  won.  To  these  qualities  of  the  warrior  he  added  a  power 
of  political  organization,  a  qapacity  for  far-reaching  com- 
binations, a  faculty  of  statesmanship,  which  became  the  herit- 
age of  the  Angevins,  and  lifted  them  as  high  above  the  intel- 
lectual level  of  the  rulers  of  their  time  as  their  shameless 
wickedness  degraded  them  below  the  level  of  man.  His 
overthrow  of  Britanny  on  the  field  of  Conquereux  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  gradual  absorption  of  Southern  Touraine,  while 
his  restless  activity  covered  the  land  with  castles  and  abbeys. 
The  very  spirit  of  the  Black  Count  seems  still  to  frown  from 
the  dark  tower  of  Durtal  on  the  sunny  valley  of  the  Loire. 
A  victory  at  Pontlevoi  crushed  the  rival  house  of  Blois  ;  the 
seizure  of  Saumur  completed  his  conquests  in  the  South, 
while  Northern  Touraine  was  won  bit  by  bit  till  only  Tours 
resisted  the  Angevin.  The  treacherous  seizure  of  its  count, 
Herbert  Wake-dog,  left  Maine  at  his  mercy  ere  the  old  man 
bequeathed  his  unfinished  work  to  his  son.  As  a  warrior 
Geoffry  Martel  was  hardly  inferior  to  his  father.  A  decis- 
ive victory  left  Poitou  at  his  mercy,  a  second  wrested 
Tours  from  the  Count  of  Blois  ;  and  the  seizure  of  Le  Mans 
brought  him  to  the  Norman  border.  Here  however  his  ad- 
vance was  checked  by  the  genius  of  William  the  Conqueror, 
and  with  his  death  the  greatness  of  Anjou  seemed  for  the 
time  to  have  come  to  an  end. 

Stripped  of  Maine  by  the  Normans  and  weakened  by  in- 
ternal dissensions,  the  weak  administration  of  the  next  count, 
Fulk  Rechin,  left  Anjou  powerless  against  its  ^e 
rivals.  It  woke  to  fresh  energy  with  the  accession  Angevin 
of  his  son,  Fulk  of  Jerusalem.  Now  urging  the  ma"iage. 
turbulent  Norman  nobles  to  revolt,  DOW  supporting  Robert's 
son  William  against  his  uncle,  offering  himself  throughout 
as  the  loyal  supporter  of  France  which  was  now  hemmed 
in  on  all  sides  by  the  forces  of  the  English  king  and  of 
his  allies  the  Counts  of  Blois  and  Champagne,  Fulk  was 
the  one  enemy  whom  Henry  the  First  really  feared.  It 
was  to  disarm  his  restless  hostility  that  the  king  gave  to  his 
son,  Geoffrv  the  Handsome,  the  hand  of  his  daughter  Ma- 
tilda. No  marriage  could  have  been  more  unpopular,  and 
the  secrecy  with  which  it  was  effected  was  held  by  the  barons 
as  freeing  them  from  the  oath  which  they  had  sworn  ;  for  no 
baron,  if  he  was  without  sons,  could  give  a  husband  to  his 


128  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

daughter  save  by  his  lord's  consent,  and  by  a  strained  analogy 
the  nobles  contended  that  their  own  assent  was  necessary  to 
the  marriage  of  Matilda.  A  more  pressing  danger  lay  in  the 
greed  of  her  husband  Geoffry,  who  from  his  habit  of  wearing 
the  common  broom  of  Anjou  (i\\e  planta  genista)  in  his  hel- 
met had  acquired,  in  addition  to  his  surname  of  "  the  Hand- 
some/' the  more  famous  title  of  "  Plantagenet."  His  claims 
ended  at  last  in  intrigues  with  the  Norman  nobles,  and  Henry 
hurried  to  the  border  to  meet  an  expected  invasion  ;  but  the 
plot  broke  down  at  his  presence,  the  Angevins  retired,  and 
the  old  man  withdrew  to  the  forest  of  Lions  to  die. 

"  God  give  him,"  wrote  the  Archbishop  of  Kouen  from 
Henry's  death-bed,  "  the  peace  beloved."     With  him  indeed 

closed  the  long  peace  of  the  Norman  rule.     An 
Stephen  of   ou^urst  of  anarchy  followed  on  the  news  of  his 

departure,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil  Earl 
Stephen,  his  nephew,  appeared  at  the  gates  of  London. 
Stephen  was  a  son  of  the  Conqueror's  daughter,  Adela,  who 
had  married  a  Count  of  Blois  ;  he  had  been  brought  up  at 
the  English  court,  and  his  claim  as  nearest  male  heir,  save 
his  brother,  of  the  Conqueror's  blood  (for  his  cousin,  the  son 
of  Robert,  had  fallen  in  Flanders)  was  supported  by  his  per- 
sonal popularity.  Mere  swordsman  as  he  was,  his  good- 
humor,  his  generosity,  his  very  prodigality  made  him  a 
favorite  with  all.  No  noble  however  had  as  yet  ventured  to 
join  him,  nor  had  any  town  opened  its  gates  when  London 
poured  out  to  meet  him  with  uproarious  welcome.  Neither 
barons  nor  prelates  were  present  to  constitute  a  National 
Council,  but  the  great  city  did  not  hesitate  to  take  their 
place.  The  voice  of  her  citizens  had  long  been  accepted  as 
representative  of  the  popular  assent  in  the  election  of  a  king  ; 
but  it  marks  the  progress  of  English  independence  under 
Henry  that  London  now  claimed  of  itself  the  right  of  elec- 
tion. Undismayed  by  the  absence  of  the  hereditary  coun- 
selors of  the  crown,  its  "  Aldermen  and  wise  folk  gathered 
together  the  folkmoot,  and  these  providing  at  their  own  will 
for  the  good  of  the  realm,  unanimously  resolved  to  choose  a 
king."  The  solemn  deliberation  ended  in  the  choice  of 
Stephen  ;  the  citizens  swore,  to  defend  the  king  with  money 
and  blood,  Stephen  swore  to  apply  his  whole  strength  to  the 
pacification  and  good  government  of  the  realm. 


ENGLAND    AND   ANJOU.      870   TO    1154.  129 

If  London  was  true  to  her  oath,  Stephen  was  false  to  his. 
The  nineteen  years  of  his  reign  are  years  of  a  misrule  and 
disorder  unknown  in  our  history.  Stephen  had  Stephen 
been  acknowledged  even  by  the  partizans  of  and  the 
Matilda,  but  his  weakness  and  prodigality  soon  barona§e- 
gave  room  to  feudal  revolt.  In  1138  a  rising  oj.  the  barons, 
planned  by  Earl  Robert  of  Gloucester,  in  southern  and  west- 
ern England  was  aided  by  the  King  of  Scots,  who  poured 
his  forces  over  the  northern  border.  Stephen  himself 
marched  on  the  western  rebels,  and  left  them  few  strongholds 
save  Bristol.  The  pillage  and  cruelties  of  the  wild  tribes  of 
Galloway  and  the  Highlands  roused  the  spirit  of  the  north; 
baron  and  freeman  gathered  at  York  round  Archbishop 
Thurstan,  and  marched  to  the  field  of  Northallerton  to  await 
the  foe.  The  sacred  banners  of  S.  Cuthbert  of  Durham,  S. 
Peter  of  York,  S.  John  of  Beverley,  and  S.  Wilfrid  of  Ripon 
hung  from  a  pole  fixed  in  a  four-wheeled  car  which  stood  in 
the  center  of  the  host.  "  I  who  wear  no  armor,"  shouted 
the  chief  of  the  Galwegians,  "  will  go  as  far  this  day  as  any 
one  with  breastplate  of  mail  ;  "  his  men  charged  with  wild 
shouts  of  "  Albin,  Albin,"  and  were  followed  by  the  Nor- 
man knighthood  of  the  Lowlands.  The  rout,  however,  was 
complete  ;  the  fierce  hordes  dashed  in  vain  against  the  close 
English  ranks  around  the  Standard,  and  the  whole  army  fled 
in  confusion  to  Carlisle. 

But  Stephen  had  few  kingly  qualities  save  that  of  a  sol- 
dier's bravery,  and  the  realm  soon  began  to  slip  from  his 
grasp.  Released  from  the  stern  hand  of  Henry,  the  barons 
fortified  their  castles,  and  their  example  was  necessarily 
followed,  in  self-defense,  by  the  great  prelates  and  nobles 
who  had  acted  as  ministers  to  the  late  king.  Roger,  Bishop 
of  Salisbury,  the  jnsticiar,  and  his  son  Roger  the  Chancellor, 
were  carried  away  by  the  panic.  They  fortified  their  castles, 
and  appeared  at  court  followed  by  a  strong  force  at  their 
back.  The  weak  violence  of  the  king's  temper  suddenly 
broke  out.  He  seized  Roger  with  his  son  the  Chancellor 
and  his  nephew  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln  at  Oxford,  and  forced 
them  to  surrender  their  strongholds.  Shame  broke  the  justi- 
ciar's  heart  ;  he  died  at  the  close  of  the  year,  and  his  nephew 
Nigel  of  Ely,  the  Treasurer,  was  driven  from  the  realm.  The 
f;ill  of  Roger's  house  shattered  the  whole  system  of  govern^ 


130  HISTORY    OF   THE    ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ment.  The  king's  violence,  while  it  cost  him  the  support  of 
the  clergy,  opened  the  way  for  Matilda's  landing  in  England  ; 
and  the  country  was  soon  divided  between  the  adherents  of  the 
two  rivals,  the  West  supporting  Matilda,  London  and  the  East 
Stephen.  A  defeat  at  Lincoln  left  the  latter  a  captive  in 
the  hands  of  his  enemies,  while  Mntilda  was  received  through- 
out the  land  as  its  "  Lady."  But  the  disdain  with  which 
she  repulsed  the  claim  of  London  to  the  enjoyment  of  its 
older  privileges  called  its  burghers  to  arms,  and  her  resolve 
to  hold  Stephen  a  prisoner  roused  his  party  again  to  life.  Fly- 
ing to  Oxford,  she  was  besieged  there  by  Stephen,  who  had 
obtained  his  release  ;  but  she  escaped  in  Avhite  robes  by  a 
postern,  and  crossing  the  river  unobserved  on  the  ice,  made 
her  way  to  Abingdon.  Six  years  later  she  returned  to  Nor- 
mandy. The  war  had  in  fact  become  a  mere  chaos  of  pillage 
and  bloodshed.  The  outrages  of  the  feudal  baronage  showed 
from  what  horrors  the  rule  of  the  Norman  kings  had  saved 
England.  No  more  ghastly  picture  of  a  nation's  misery  has 
ever  been  painted  than  that  which  closes  the  English  Chron- 
icle, whose  last  accents  falter  out  amidst  the  horrors  of  the 
time.  "  They  hanged  up  men  by  their  feet  and  smoked 
them  with  foul  smoke.  Some  were  hanged  up  by  their 
thumbs,  others  by  the  head,  and  burning  things  were  hung 
on  to  their  feet.  They  put  knotted  strings  about  men's 
heads  and  writhed  them  till  they  went  into  the  brain.  They 
put  men  into  prisons  where  adders  and  snakes  and  toads  were 
crawling,  and  so  they  tormented  them.  Some  they  put  into 
a  chest  short  and  narrow  and  not  deep,  and  that  had  sharp 
stones  within,  and  forced  men  therein  so  that  they  broke  all 
their  limbs.  In  many  of  the  castles  were  hateful  and  grim 
things  called  rachenteges,  which  two  or  three  men  had 
enough  to  do  to  carry.  It  was  thus  made  :  it  was  fastened 
to  a  beam  and  had  a  sharp  iron  to  go  about  a  man's  neck  and 
throat,  so  that  he  might  noways  sit,  or  lie,  or  sleep,  but  he 
bore  all  the  iron.  Many  thousands  they  starved  with 
hunger." 

England  was  rescued  from  this  feudal  anarchy  by  the  efforts 
of  the  Church.  In  the  early  part  of  Stephen's  reign  his 
England  brother  Henry,  the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  acting 
and  the  as  Papal  Legate  for  the  realm,  had  striven  to  supply 
Church,  ^g  aDSence  Of  anv  r0yai  or  national  authority  by 


ENGLAND   AND   ANJOU.      870   TO   1154.  131 

convening  synods  of  bishops,  and  by  asserting  the  moral 
right  of  the  Church  to  declare  sovereigns  unworthy  of 
the  throne.  The  compact  between  king  and  people  which 
became  a  part  of  constitutional  law  in  the  Charter  of 
Henry  had  gathered  new  force  in  the  Charter  of  Stephen, 
but  its  legitimate  consequence  in  the  responsibility  of  the 
crown  for  the  execution  of  the  compact  was  first  drawn 
out  by  these  ecclesiastical  councils.  From  their  alternate 
depositions  of  Stephen  and  Matilda  flowed  the  after  de- 
positions of  Edward  and  Richard,  and  the  solemn  act  by 
which  the  successions  was  changed  in  the  case  of  James. 
Extravagant  and  unauthorized  as  their  expression  of  it  may 
appear,  they  expressed  the  right  of  a  nation  to  good  govern- 
ment. Henry  of  Winchester,  however,  "half  monk,  half 
soldier/*  as  he  was  called,  possessed  too  little  religious  influ- 
ence to  wield  a  really  spiritual  power  ;  it  was  only  at  the 
close  of  Stephen's  reign  that  the  nation  really  found  a  moral 
leader  in  Theobald,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  "  To 
the  Church,"  Thomas  justly  said  afterwards,  with  the  proud 
consciousness  of  having  been  Theobald's  right  hand,  "  Henry 
owed  his  crown  and  England  her  deliverance."  Thomas  was 
the  son  of  Gilbert  Beket,  the  portreeve  of  London,  the  site 
of  whose  house  is  still  marked  by  the  Mercers'  chapel  in 
Cheapside.  His  mother  Rohese  was  a  type  of  the  devout 
woman  of  her  day  ;  she  weighed  her  boy  each  year  on  his 
birthday  against  mcney,  clothes,  and  provisions  which  she 
gave  to  the  poor.  Thomas  grew  up  amidst  the  Norman 
barons  and  clerks  who  frequented  his  father's  house  with  a 
genial  freedom  of  character  tempered  by  the  Norman  refine- 
ment ;  he  passed  from  the  school  of  Merton  to  the  University 
of  Paris,  and  returned  to  fling  himself  into  the  life  of  the 
young  nobles  of  the  time.  Tall,  handsome,  bright-eyed, 
ready  of  wit  and  speech,  his  firmness  of  temper  showed  itself 
in  his  very  sports  ;  to  rescue  his  hawk  which  had  fallen  into 
the  water  he  once  plunged  into  a  millrace,  and  was  all  but 
crushed  by  the  wheel.  The  loss  of  his  father's  wealth  drove 
him  to  the  court  of  Archbishop  Theobald,  and  he  soon  be- 
came the  Primate's  confidant  in  his  plans  for  the  rescue  of 
England.  Henry,  the  son  of  Matilda  and  Geoffry,  had  now 
by  the  death  of  his  father  become  master  of  Normandy  and 
Anjou,  while  by  his  marriage  with  its  duchess,  Eleanor  of 


132  HISTORY   OP   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Poitou,  he  had  added  Aquitaine  to  his  dominions.  Thomas, 
as  Theobald's  agent,  invited  Henry  to  appear  in  England, 
and  on  the  Duke's  landing  the  Archbishop  interposed  between 
the  rival  claimants  to  the  crown.  The  Treaty  of  Walling- 
ford  abolished  the  evils  of  the  long  anarchy  ;  the  castles  were 
to  be  razed,  the  crown  lands  resumed,  the  foreign  mercenaries 
banished  from  the  country.  Stephen  was  recognized  as  king, 
and  in  turn  acknowledged  Henry  as  his  heir.  But  a  year  had 
hardly  passed  when  Stephen's  death  gave  his  rival  the  crown. 

Section  VIII.— Henry  the  Second.    1154—1189. 

[Authorities. — Up  to  the  death  of  Archbishop  Thomas  we  have  only  the  letters 
of  Beket  himself,  Foliot,  and  John  of  Salisbury,  collected  by  Canon  Robertson 
and  Dr.  Giles ;  but  this  dearth  is  followed  by  a  vast  outburst  of  historical  in- 
dustry. From  1169  till  1192  our  primary  authority  is  the  Chronicle  known  as  that 
of  Benedict  of  Peterborough,  whose  authorship  Dr.  Stubbs  has  shown  to  be  more 
probably  due  to  the  royal  treasurer,  Bishop  Richard  Fitz-Neal.  It  is  continued  to 
1301  by  Roger  of  Howden.  Both  are  works  of  the  highest  value,  and  have  been 
edited  for  the  Rolls  series  by  Dr.  Stubbs,  whose  prefaces  have  thrown  a  new  light 
on  the  constitutional  history  of  Henry's  reign.  The  history  by  William  of  New- 
burgh  (which  ends  in  1198)  is  a  work  of 'the  classical  school,  like  William  of  Malmes- 
bury,  but  distinguished  by  its  fairness  and  good  sense.  To  these  may  be  added  the 
chronicles  of  Ralf  Niger,  with  the  additions  of  Ralf  of  Coggeshall,  that  of  Gervase 
of  Canterbury,  and  the  Life  of  S.  Hugh  of  Lincoln.  A  mass  of  general  literature 
lies  behind  these  distinctively  historical  sources,  in  the  treatises  of  John  of  Salis. 
bury,  the  voluminous  works  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  the  "  trifles  "  and  satires  of 
Walter  Map,  Glanvill's  treatise  on  Law.  Fitz-Neal's  "  Dialogue  on  the  Exchequer,'' 
•he  romances  of  Gaimar  and  Wace,  the  poem  of  the  San  Graal.  Lord  Lyttelton's 
"  Life  of  Henry  the  Second "  is  a  full  and  sober  account  of  the  time  ;  Canon 
Robertson's  Biography  of  Beket  is  accurate,  but  hostile  in  tone.  In  his  "  Select 
Charters  "  Dr.  Stubbs  has  printed  the  various  "  Assizes,"  and  the  Dialogus  de 
Scaccario,  which  explains  the  financial  administration  of  the  Curia  Regis.] 

Young  as  he  was,  Henry  mounted  the  throne  with  a  res- 
olute purpose  of  government  which  his  reign  carried  stead- 
ily out.  His  practical,  serviceable  frame  suited  the  hardest 
worker  of  his  time.  There  was  something  in  his  build  and 
look,  in  the  square  stout  frame,  the  fiery  face,  the  close- 
cropped  hair,  the  prominent  eyes,  the  bull  neck,  the  coarse 
strong  hands,  the  bowed  legs,  that  marked  out  the  keen, 
stirring,  coarse-fibered  man  of  business.  "  He  never  sits 
down,"  said  one  who  observed  him  closely  ;  "  he  is  always  on 
his  legs  from  morning  till  night."  Orderly  in  business,  care- 
less in  appearance,  sparing  in  diet,  never  resting  or  giving 
his  servants  rest,  chatty,  inquisitive,  endowed  with  a  singular 
charm  of  address  and  strength  of  memory,  obstinate  in  love 


THE  DOMINIONS  OF 

THE     AKOEVINS 


HENRY   THE   SECOND.      1154   TO   1189.  133 

or  hatred,  a  fair  scholar,  a  great  hunter,  his  general  air  that 
of  a  rough,  passionate,  busy  man,  Henry's  personal  character 
told  directly  on  the  character  of  his  reign.  His  accession 
marks  the  period  of  amalgamation,  when  neighborhood  and 
traffic  and  intermarriage  drew  Englishmen  and  Normans 
rapidly  into  a  single  people.  A  national  feeling  was  thus 
springing  up  before  which  the  barriers  of  the  older  feudalism 
were  to  be  swept  away.  Henry  had  even  less  reverence  for 
the  feudal  past  than  the  men  of  his  day  ;  he  was  indeed  utterly 
without  the  imagination  and  reverence  which  enable  men 
to  sympathize  with  any  past  at  all.  He  had  a  practical  man's 
impatience  of  the  obstacles  thrown  in  the  way  of  his  reforms 
by  the  older  constitution  of  the  realm,  nor  could  he  under- 
stand other  men's  reluctance  to  purchase  undoubted  improve- 
ments by  the  sacrifice  of  customs  and  traditions  of  bygone 
days.  Without  any  theoretical  hostility  to  the  coordinate 
powers  of  the  state,  it  seemed  to  him  a  perfectly  reasonable 
and  natural  course  to  trample  either  baronage  or  Church  un- 
der foot  to  gain  his  end  of  good  government.  He  saw  clearly 
that  the  remedy  for  such  anarchy  as  England  had  endured 
under  Stephen  lay  in  the 'establishment  of  a  kingly  govern- 
ment unembarrassed  by  any  privileges  of  order  or  class,  ad- 
ministered by  royal  servants,  and  in  whose  public  administra- 
tion the  nobles  acted  simply  as  delegates  of  the  sovereign. 
His  work  was  to  lie  in  the  organization  of  judicial  and  ad- 
ministrative reforms  which  realized  this  idea.  But  of  the 
great  currents  of  thought  and  feeling  which  were  tending  in 
the  same  direction  he  knew  nothing.  What  he  did  for  the 
moral  and  social  impulses  which  were  telling  on  men  about 
him  was  simply  to  let  them  alone.  Religion  grew  more  and 
more  identified  with  patriotism  under  the  eyes  of  a  king  who 
whispered,  and  scribbled,  and  looked  at  picture-books  during 
mass,  who  never  confessed,  and  cursed  God  in  wild  frenzies  of 
blasphemy.  Great  peoples  formed  themselves  on  both  sides 
of  the  sea  round  a  sovereign  who  bent  the  whole  force  of  his 
mind  to  hold  together  an  Empire  which  the  growth  of  nation- 
ality must  inevitably  destroy.  There  is  throughout  a  tragic 
grandeur  in  the  irony  of  Henry's  position,  that  of  a  Sforza 
of  the  fifteenth  century  set  in  the  midst  of  the  twelfth, 
building  up  by  patience  and  policy  and  craft  a  dominion  alien 
to  the  deepest  sympathies  of  his  age,  and  fated  to  be  swept 


134  HISTORY   OV  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

away  in  the  end  by  popular  forces  to  whose  existence  his 
very  cleverness  and  activity  blinded  him.  But  indirectly  and 
unconsciously,  his  policy  did  more  than  that  of  all  his  pred- 
ecessors to  prepare  England  for  the  unity  and  freedom 
which  the  fall  of  his  house  was  to  reveal. 

He  had  been  placed  on  the  throne,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the 
Church.  His  first  work  was  to  repair  the  evils  which  Eng- 
land had  endured  till  his  accession  by  the  restora- 
tion  of  the  system  of  Henry  the  First  ;  and  it  was 
with  the  aid  and  counsel  of  Theobald  that  the 
foreign  marauders  were  driven  from  the  realm,  the  castles 
demolished  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  baronage,  the 
king's  court  and  exchequer  restored.  Age  and  infirmity 
however  warned  the  Primate  to  retire  from  the  post  of  min- 
ister, and  his  power  fell  into  the  younger  and  more  vigorous 
hands  of  Thomas  Beket,  who  had  long  acted  as  his  confiden- 
tial adviser  and  was  now  made  Chancellor.  Thomas  won  the 
personal  favor  of  the  king.  The  two  young  men  had,  in 
Theobald's  words,  "  but  one  heart  and  mind  ; "  Henry  jested 
in  the  Chancellor's  hall,  or  tore  his  cloak  from  his  shoulders 
in  rough  horse-play  as  they  rode  through  the  streets.  He 
loaded  his  favorite  with  riches  and  honors,  but  there  is  no 
ground  for  thinking  that  Thomas  in  any  degree  influenced 
his  system  of  rule.  Henry's  policy  seems  for  good  or  evil  to 
have  been  throughout  his  own.  His  work  of  reorganization 
went  steadily  on  amidst  troubles  at  home  and  abroad.  Welsh 
outbreaks  forced  him  in  1157  to  lead  an  army  across  the 
border.  The  next  year  saw  him  d-rawn  across  the  Channel, 
where  he  was  already  master  of  a  third  of  the  present  France. 
He  had  inherited  Anjou,  Maine,  and  Touraine  from  his 
father,  Normandy  from  his  mother,  and  the  seven  provinces 
of  the  South,  Poitou,  Saintonge,  the  Angoumois,  La  Marche, 
the  Limousin,  Perigord,  and  Gascony  belonged  to  his  wife. 
As  Duchess  of  Aquitaine  Eleanor  had  claims  on  Toulouse, 
and  these  Henry  prepared  in  1159  to  enforce  by  arms.  He 
was  however  luckless  in  the  war.  King  Lewis  of  France 
threw  himself  into  Toulouse.  Conscious  of  the  ill-compacted 
nature  of  his  wide  dominions,  Henry  shrank  from  an  open 
contest  with  his  suzerain  ;  he  withdrew  his  forces,  and  the 
quarrel  ended  in  1160  by  a  formal  alliance  and  the  betrothal 
of  his  eldest  son  to  the  daughter  of  Lewis.  Thomas  had 


HENRY    THE   SECOND.      1154   TO    1189.  135 

fought  bravely  throughout  the  campaign,  at  the  head  of  the 
700  knights  who  formed  his  household.  But  the  king  had 
other  work  for  him  than  war.  On  Theobald's  death  he  at 
once  forced  on  the  monks  of  Canterbury,  and  on  Thomas 
himself,  his  election  as  Archbishop.  His  purpose  in  this  ap- 
pointment was  soon  revealed.  Henry  proposed  to  the  bishops 
that  a  clerk  convicted  of  a  crime  should  be  deprived  of  his 
orders,  and  handed  over  to  the  king's  tribunals.  The  local 
courts  of  the  feudal  baronage  had  been  roughly  shorn  of  their 
power  by  the  judicial  reforms  of  Henry  the  First ;  and  the 
Church  courts,  as  the  Conqueror  had  created  them,  with 
their  exclusive  right  of  justice  over  the  clerical  order,  in 
other  words  over  the  whole  body  of  educated  men  through- 
out the  realm,  formed  the  one  great  exception  to  the  system 
which  was  concentrating  all  jurisdiction  in  the  hands  of  the 
king.  The  bishops  yielded,  but  opposition  came  from  the 
very  prelate  whom.  Henry  had  created  to  enforce  his  will. 
From  the  moment  of  his  appointment  Thomas  had  flung 
himself  with  the  whole  energy  of  his  nature  into  the  part  he 
had  to  play.  At  the  first  intimation  of  Henry's  purpose  he 
had  pointed  with  a  laugh  to  his  gay  attire — "  You  are  choos- 
ing a  fine  dress  to  figure  at  the  head  of  your  Canterbury 
monks  ; "  but  once  monk  and  primate,  he  passed  with  a  fe- 
vered earnestness  from  luxury  to  asceticism.  Even  as  min- 
ister he  had  opposed  the  king's  designs,  and  foretold  their 
future  opposition  :  "  You  will  soon  hate  me  as  much  as  you 
love  me  now,"  he  said,  "  for  you  assume  an  authority  in  the 
affairs  of  the  Church  to  which  1  shall  never  assent."  A  pru- 
dent man  might  have  doubted  the  wisdom  of  destroying  the 
only  shelter  which  protected  piety  or  learning  against  a 
despot  like  the  Red  King,  and  in  the  mind  of  Thomas  the 
ecclesiastical  immunities  were  parts  of  the  sacred  heritage 
of  the  Church.  He  stood  without  support  :  the  Pope  ad- 
vised concession,  the  bishops  forsook  him,  and  Thomas  bent 
at  last  to  agree  to  the  Constitutions  drawn  up  at  the  Council 
of  Clarendon.  The  king  had  appealed  to  the  ancient  "  cus- 
toms "  of  the  realm,  and  it  was  lo  state  these  "  customs  '' 
that  a  court  was  held  at  Clarendon  near  Salisbury.  The  re- 
port presented  by  bishops  and  barons  formed  the  "  Constitu- 
tions of  Clarendon,"  a  code  which  in  the  bulk  of  its  provisions 
simply  reenacted  the  system  of  the  Conqueror.  Every  elec- 


136  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

tiou  of  bishop  or  abbot  was  to  take  place  before  royal  officers, 
in  the  king's  chapel,  and  with  the  king's  assent.  The 
prelate  elect  was  bound  to  do  homage  to  the  king  for  his 
lands  before  consecration,  and  to  hold  his  lands  as  a  barony 
from  the  king,  subject  to  all  feudal  burdens  of  taxation  and 
attendance  in  the  king's  court.  No  bishop  might  leave  the 
realm  without  the  royal  permission.  No  tenant  in  chief  or 
royal  servant  might  be  excommunicated,  or  their  land  placed 
under  interdict,  but  by  the  king's  assent.  What  was  new 
was  the  legislation  respecting  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction.  The 
king's  court  was  to  decide  whether  a  suit  between  clerk  and 
layman,  whose  nature  was  disputed,  belonged  to  the  Church 
courts  or  the  king's.  A  royal  officer  was  to  be  present  at  all 
ecclesiastical  proceedings,  in  order  to  confine  the  Bishop's 
court  within  its  own  due  limits,  and  a  clerk  once  convicted 
there  passed  at  once  under  the  civil  jurisdiction.  An  appeal 
was  left  from  the  Archbishop's  court  to  the  king's  court  for 
defect  of  justice,  but  none  might  appeal  to  the  Papal  court 
save  with  the  king's  consent.  The  privilege  of  sanctuary  in 
churches  or  churchyards  was  repealed,  so  far  as  property  and 
not  persons  was  concerned.  After  a  passionate  refusal  the 
Primate  at  last  gave  his  assent  to  the  Constitutions  ;  but  this 
assent  was  soon  retracted,  and  the  king's  savage  resentment 
threw  the  moral  advantage  of  the  position  into  the  Arch- 
bishop's hands.  Vexatious  charges  were  brought  against 
him  ;  in  the  Council  of  Northampton  a  few  months  later  his 
life  was  said  to  be  in  danger,  and  all  urged  him  to  submit. 
But  in  the  presence  of  danger  the  courage  of  the  man  rose 
to  its  full  height.  Grasping  his  archiepiscopal  cross  he  en- 
tered the  royal  court,  forbade  the  nobles  to  condemn  him, 
and  appealed  to  the  Papal  See.  Shouts  of  ' '  Traitor  !  traitor  ! " 
followed  him  as  he  retired.  The  Primate  turned  fiercely  at 
the  word  :  "  Were  I  a  knight/'  he  retorted,  "  my  sword 
should  answer  that  foul  taunt  !  "  At  nightfall  he  fled  in  dis- 
guise, and  reached  France  through  Flanders.  For  six  years 
the  contest  raged  bitterly  ;  at  Eome,  at  Paris,  the  agents  of 
the  two  powers  intrigued  against  each  other.  Henry  stooped 
to  acts  of  the  meanest  persecution  in  driving  the  Primate's 
kinsmen  from  England,  and  in  threats  to  confiscate  the  lands 
of  the  Cistercians  that  he  might  force  the  monks  of  Pontigny 
to  refuse  Thomas  a  home  ;  while  Beket  himself  exhausted 


HENRY  THE   SECOND.      1154   TO   1189.  137 

the  patience  of  his  friends  by  his  violence  and  excommunica- 
tions, as  well  as  by  the  stubbornness  with  which  he  clung  to 
the  offensive  clause  "  Saving  the  honor  of  my  order,"  the  ad- 
dition of  which  would  have  practically  neutralized  the  king's 
reforms.  The  Pope  counseled  mildness,  the  French  king 
for  a  time  withdrew  his  support,  his  own  clerks  gave  way  at 
last.  "  Come  up/'  said  one  of  them  bitterly  when  his  horse 
stumbled  on  the  road,  "  saving  the  honor  of  the  Church  and 
my  order."  But  neither  warning  nor  desertion  moved  the 
resolution  of  the  Primate.  Henry,  in  dread  of  Papal  excom- 
munication, resolved  at  last  on  the  coronation  of  his  son,  in 
defiance  of  the  privileges  of  Canterbury,  by  the  Archbishop 
of  York.  But  the  Pope's  hands  were  now  freed  by  his  suc- 
cesses in  Italy,  and  his  threat  of  an  interdict  forced  the  king 
to  a  show  of  submission.  The  Archbishop  was  allowed  to 
return  after  a  reconciliation  with  Henry  at  Freteval,  and  the 
Kentishmen  flocked  around  him  with  uproarious  welcome  as 
he  entered  Canterbury.  "  This  is  England,"  said  his  clerks, 
as  they  saw  the  white  headlands  of  the  coast.  "You  will 
wish  yourself  elsewhere  before  fifty  days  are  gone,"  said 
Thomas  sadly,  and  his  foreboding  showed  his  appreciation  of 
Henry's  character.  He  was  now  in  the  royal  power,  and  or- 
ders had  already  been  issued  in  the  younger  Henry's  name 
for  his  arrest,  when  four  knights  from  the  king's  court, 
spurred  to  outrage  by  a  passionate  outburst  of  their  master's 
wrath,  crossed  the  sea  and  forced  their  way  into  the  Arch- 
bishop's palace.  After  a  stormy  parley  with  him  in  his  cham- 
ber they  withdrew  to  arm.  Thomas  was  hurried  by  his  clerks 
into  the  cathedral,  but  as  he  reached  the  steps  leading  from 
the  transept  to  the  choir  his  pursuers  burst  in  from  the 
cloisters.  "  Where,"  cried  Eeginald  Fitzurse  in  the  dusk  of 
the  dimly-lighted  minster,  "  where  is  the  traitor,  Thomas 
Beket  ?  "  The  Primate  turned  resolutely  back  :  "  Here  am 
I,  no  traitor,  but  a  priest  of  God,"  he  replied,  and  again  de- 
scending the  steps  he  placed  himself  with  his  back  against  a 
pillar  and  fronted  his  foes.  -  All  the  bravery,  the  violence  of 
his  old  knightly  life  seemed  to  revive  in  Thomas  as  he  tossed 
back  the  threats  and  demands  of  his  assailants.  "  You  are 
our  prisoner,"  shouted  Fitzurse,  and  the  four  knights  seized 
him  to  drag  him  from  the  church.  "  Do  not  touch  me, 
Reginald,"  shouted  the  Primate,  "  pander  that  you  are,  you 


138  HISTOKY   OP   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

owe  me  fealty  ;"  and  availing  himself  of  his  personal  strength 
he  shook  him  roughly  off.  "  Strike,  strike/'  retorted  Fitz- 
urse,  and  blow  after  blow  struck  Thomas  to  the  ground.  A 
retainer  of  Ranulf  de  Broc  with  the  point  of  his  sword  scat- 
tered the  Primate's  brains  on  the  ground.  "  Let  us  be  off/' 
he  cried  triumphantly,  "this  traitor  will  never  rise  again." 
The  brutal  murder  was  received  with  a  thrill  of  horror 
throughout  Christendom  ;  miracles  were  wrought  at  the  mar- 
Henry  and  tyr's  tomb  ;  he  was  canonized,  and  became  the 
the  baron-  most  popular  of  English  saints  ;  but  Henry's  show 
ase-  of  submission  to  the  Papacy  averted  the  excom- 
munication which  at  first  threatened  to  avenge  the  deed  of 
blood.  The  judicial  provisions  of  the  Constitutions  of 
Clarendon  were  in  form  annulled,  and  liberty  of  election  was 
restored  to  bishoprics  and  abbacies.  In  reality  however  the 
victory  rested  with  the  king.  Throughout  his  reign  ecclesi- 
astical appointments  were  practically  in  his  hands,  while  the 
king's  court  asserted  its  power  over  the  spiritual  jurisdiction 
of  the  bishops.  The  close  of  the  struggle  left  Henry  free  to 
complete  his  great  work  of  legal  reform.  He  had  already 
availed  himself  of  the  expedition  against  Toulouse  to  deliver 
a  blow  at  the  baronage  by  allowing  the  lower  tenants  to  com- 
mute their  personal  service  in  the  field  for  a  money  payment 
under  the  name  of  "  scutage,"  or  shield-money.  The  king 
thus  became  master  of  resources  which  enabled  him  to  dis- 
pense with  the  military  support  of  his  tenants,  and  to  main- 
tain a  force  of  mercenary  soldiers  in  their  place.  The  dim- 
inution of  the  military  power  of  the  nobles  was  accompanied 
by  measures  which  robbed  them  of  their  legal  jurisdiction. 
The  circuits  of  the  judges  were  restored,  and  instructions 
were  given  them  to  enter  the  manors  of  the  barons  and  make 
inquiry  into  their  privileges ;  while  the  office  of  sheriff  was 
withdrawn  from  the  great  nobles  of  the  shire  and  entrusted 
to  the  lawyers  and  courtiers  who  already  furnished  the  staff 
of  justices.  The  resentment  of  the  barons  found  an  oppor- 
tunity of  displaying  itself  when  the  king's  eldest  son,  whose 
coronation  had  given  him  the  title  of  King,  demanded  to  be 
put  in  possession  of  his  English  realm,  and  on  his  father's 
refusal  took  refuge  with  Lewis  of  France.  France,  Flanders, 
and  Scotland  joined  the  league  against  Henry  ;  his  younger 
sons,  Richard  and  Geoff ry,  took  up  arms  in  Aquitaine.  In 


HENRY  THE   SECOND.      1154  TO   1189.  139 

England  a  descent  of  Flemish  mercenaries  under  the  Earl  of 
Leicester  was  repulsed  by  the  l6yal  justiciars  near  S.  Edmunds- 
bury  ;  but  Lewis  had  no  sooner  entered  Normandy  and  in- 
vested Rouen  than  the  whole  extent  of  the  danger  was  re- 
vealed. The  Scots  crossed  the  border,  Roger  Mowbray  rose 
in  revolt  in  Yorkshire,  Ferrars,  Earl  of  Derby,  in  the  mid- 
land shires,  Hugh  Bigod  in  the  eastern  counties,  while  a 
Flemish  fleet  prepared  to  support  the  insurrection  by  a  de- 
scent upon  the  coast.  The  murder  of  Archbishop  Thomas 
still  hung  around  Henry's  neck,  and  his  first  act  in  hurrying 
to  England  to  meet  these  perils  was  to  prostrate  himself 
before  the  shrine  of  the  new  martyr,  and  to  submit  to  a 
public  scourging  in  expiation  of  his  sin.  But  the  penance 
was  hardly  wrought  when  all  danger  was  dispelled  by  a  series 
of  triumphs.  The  King  of  Scotland,  William  of  Lion,  sur- 
prised by  the  English  under  cover  of  a  mist,  fell  into  the 
hands  of  his  minister,  Ranulf  de  Glanvill,  and  at  the  retreat 
of  the  Scots  the  English  rebels  hastened  to  lay  down  their 
arms.  With  the  army  of  mercenaries  which  he  had  brought 
oversea  Henry  was  able  to  return  to  Normandy,  to  raise  the 
siege  of  Rouen,  and  to  reduce  his  sons  to  submission.  The 
revolt  of  the  baronage  was  followed  by  fresh  blows  at  their 
power.  A  further  step  was  taken  a  few  years  later  in  the 
military  organization  of  the  realm  by  the  Assize  of  Arms, 
which  restored  the  national  militia  to  the  place  which  it  had 
lost  at  the  Conquest.  The  substitution  of  scutage  for  mili- 
tary service  had  freed  the  crown  from  its  dependence  on  the 
bondage  and  its  feudal  retainers  ;  the  Assize  of  Arms  replaced 
this  feudal  organization  by  the  older  obligation  of  every  free- 
man to  serve  in  the  defense  of  the  realm.  Every  knight  was 
bound  to  appear  at  the  king's  call  in  coat  of  mail  and  with 
shield  and  lance,  every  freeholder  with  lace  and  hauberk, 
every  burgess  and  poorer  freeman  with  lance  and  helmet. 
The  levy  of  an  armed  nation  was  thus  placed  wholly  at  the 
disposal  of  the  king  for  the  purposes  of  defense. 

The  measures  we  have  named  were  only  part  of  Henry's 
legislation.  His  reign,  it  has  been  truly  said,  "  initiated  the 
rule  of  law"  as  distinct  from  the  despotism, 
whether  personal  or  tempered  by  routine,  of  the 
Norman  kings.  It  was  in  successive  "Assizes" 
or  codes  issued  with  the  sanction  of  great  councils  of  barons 


140  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLK. 

and  prelates,  that  he  perfected  by  a  system  of  reforms  the 
administrative  measures  which  Henry  the  First  had  begun. 
The  fabric  of  our  judicial  legislation  commences  with  the 
Assize  of  Clarendon,  the  first  object  of  which  was  to  provide 
for  the  order  of  the  realm  by  reviving  the  old  English  system 
of  mutual  security  or  frankpledge.  No  stranger  might  abide 
in  anyplace  save  a  borough,  and  there  but  for  a  single  night, 
unless  sureties  were  given  for  his  good  behavior  ;  and  the  list 
of  such  strangers  was  to  be  submitted  to  the  itinerant  justices. 
In  the  provisions  of  this  assize  for  the  repression  of  crime  we 
find  the  origin  of  trial  by  jury,  so  often  attributed  to  earlier 
times.  Twelve  lawful  men  of  each  hundred,  with  four  from 
each  township,  were  sworn  to  present  those  who  were  known 
or  reputed  as  criminals  within  their  district  for  trial  by 
ordeal.  The  jurors  were  thus  not  merely  witnesses,  but 
sworn  to  act  as  judges  also  in  determining  the  value  of  the 
charge,  and  it  is  this  double  character  of  Henry's  jurors  that 
has  descended  to  our  "  grand  jury/'  who  still  remain  charged 
with  the  duty  of  presenting  criminals  for  trial  after  exami- 
nation of  the  witnesses  against  them.  Two  later  steps  brought 
the  jury  to  its  modern  condition.  Under  Edward  the  First 
witnesses  acquainted  with  the  particular  fact  in  question  were 
added  in  each  case  to  the  general  jury,  and  by  the  separation 
of  these  two  classes  of  jurors  at  a  later  time  the  last  became 
simply  "witnesses"  without  any  judicial  power,  while  the 
first  ceased  to  be  witnesses  at  all,  and  became  our  modern 
jurors,  who  are  only  judges  of  the  testimony  given.  With 
this  assize,  too,  the  practise  which  had  prevailed  from  the 
earliest  English  times  of  "  compurgation"  passed  away. 
Under  this  system  the  accused  could  be  acquitted  of  the 
charge  by  the  voluntary  oath  of  his  neighbors  and  kinsmen  ; 
but  this  was  abolished  by  the  Assize  of  Clarendon,  and  for 
the  next  fifty  years  his  trial,  after  the  investigation  of  the 
grand  jury,  was  found  solely  in  the  ordeal  or  "  judgment  of 
God,"  where  innocence  was  proved  by  the  power  of  holding 
hot  iron  in  the  hand,  or  by  sinking  when  flung  into  the  water, 
for  swimming  was  a  proof  of  guilt.  It  was  the  abolition  of 
the  whole  system  of  ordeal  by  the  Council  of  Lateran  which 
led  the  way  to  the  establishment  of  what  is  called  a  "  petty 
jury"  for  the  final  trial  of  prisoners.  The  Assize  of  Claren- 
don was  expanded  in  that  of  Northampton,  which  was  drawn 


HENRY   THE   SECONDt      1154   TO.  1189.  141 

up  immediately  after  the  rebellion  of  the  Barons.  Henry, 
as  we  have  seen,  had  restored  the  King's  Court  and  the 
occasional  circuits  of  its  justices  :  by  the  Assize  of  North- 
ampton he  rendered  this  institution  permanent  and  regular 
by  dividing  the  kingdom  into  six  districts,  to  each  of  which 
he  assigned  three  itinerant  justices.  The  circuits  thus  de- 
fined corresponded  roughly  with  those  that  still  exist.  The 
primary  object  of  these  circuits  was  financial,  but  the  render- 
ing of  the  king's  justice  went  on  side  by  side  with  the  ex- 
action of  the  king's  dues,  and  this  carrying  of  justice  to  every 
corner  of  the  realm  was  made  still  more  effective  by  the  aboli- 
tion of  all  feudal  exemptions  from  the  royal  jurisdiction.  The 
chief  danger  of  the  new  system  lay  in  the  opportunities  it 
afforded  to  judicial  corruption  ;  and  so  great  were  its  abuses 
that  Henry  was  soon  forced  to  restrict  for  a  time  the  number 
of  justices  to  five,  and  to  reserve  appeals  from  their  court  to 
himself  in  council.  The  Court  of  Appeal  which  he  thus 
created,  that  of  the  King  in  Council,  gave  birth  as  time  went 
on  to  tribunal  after  tribunal.  It  is  from  it  that  the  judicial 
powers  now  exercised  by  the  Privy  Council  are  derived,  as 
well  as  the  equitable  jurisdiction  of  the  Chancellor.  In  the 
next  century  it  becomes  the  Great  Council  of  the  realm,  from 
which  the  Privy  Council  drew  its  legislative,  and  the  House 
of  Lords  its  judicial  character.  The  Court  of  Star  Chamber 
and  the  judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  are  later 
offshots  of  Henry's  Court  of  Appeal.  The  King's  Court, 
which  became  inferior  to  this  higher  jurisdiction,  was  divided 
after  the  Great  Charter  into  the  three  distinct  courts  of  the 
King's  Bench,  the  Exchequer,  and  the  Common  Pleas,  which 
by  the  time  of  Edward  the  First  received  distinct  judges,  and 
became  for  all  purposes  separate. 

For  the  ten  years  which  followed  the  revolt  of  the  barons 
Henry's  power  was  at  its  height ;  and  an  invasion,  which  we 
shall  tell    hereafter,  had  annexed  Ireland  to  his     Death  of 
English  crown.     But  the  course  of  triumph  and    Henry  the 
legislative  reform  was  rudely  broken  by  the  quar-      Second, 
rels  and  revolts  of  his  sons.     The  successive  deaths  of  Henry 
and  Geoff ry  Avere  followed  by  intrigues  between  Richard,  now 
his  father's  heir,   who  had  been  entrusted  with  Aquitaine, 
and  Philip,  who  had  succeeded  Lewis  on  the  throne  of  France. 
The  plot  broke  out  at  last  in  actual  conflict;  Richard    did 


142  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

homage  to  Philip,  and  their  allied  forces  suddenly  appeared 
before  Le  Mans,  from  which  Henry  was  driven  in  headlong 
flight  towards  Normandy.  From  a  height  where  he  halted  to 
look  back  on  the  burning  city,  so  dear  to  him  as  his  birth- 
place, the  king  hurled  his  curse  against  God  :  "  Since  Thou 
hast  taken  from  me  the  town  I  loved  best  where  I  was  born 
and  bred,  and  where  my  father  lies  buried,  I  will  have  my 
revenge  on  Thee  too — I  will  rob  Thee  of  that  thing  Thou 
lovest  most  in  me."  Death  was  upon  him,  and  the  longing  of 
a  dying  man  drew  him  to  the  home  of  his  race,  but  Tours 
fell  as  he  lay  at  Saumur,  and  the  hunted  king  was  driven  to 
beg  mercy  from  his  foes.  They  gave  him  the  list  of  the  con- 
spirators against  him  :  at  the  head  of  them  was  his  youngest 
and  best-loved  son,  John.  "  Now,"  he  said,  as  he  turned  his 
face  to  the  wall,  "  let  things  go  as  they  will — I  care  no  more 
for  myself  or  for  the  world."  He  was  borne  to  Chinon  by 
the  silvery  waters  of  Vienne,  and  muttering  "  Shame,  shame 
on  a  conquered  king,"  passed  sullenly  away. 


Section  IX.— The  Fall  of  the  Angevins.    1189 — 1204. 

[Authorities.— In  addition  to  those  mentioned  in  the  last  Section,  the  Chronicle 
of  Richard  of  Devizes,  and  the  "  Itinerarium  Regis  Ricardi,"  edited  by  Dr. 
Stubbs,  are  useful  for  Richard's  reign.  Rigord's  "  Gesta  Philippi,"  and  the 
"  Philippis  Willelmi  Britonis,"  the  chief  authorities  on  the  French  side,  are  given 
in  Duchesne,  "  Hist.  Franc.  Scriptores,"  vol.  v.] 

We  need  not  follow  Eichard  in  the  Crusade  which  occupied 
the  beginning  of  his  reign,  and  which  left  England  for  four 

years  without  a  ruler, — in  his  quarrels  in  Sicily, 
the°Fi:ret  his  conquest  of  Cyprus,  his  victory  at  Jaffa,  his 

fruitless  march  upon  Jerusalem,  the  truce  he  con- 
cluded with  Saladin,  his  shipwreck  as  he  returned,  or  his 
two  imprisonments  in  Germany.  Freed  at  last  from  his 
captivity,  he  returned  to  face  new  perils.  During  his  absence, 
the  kingdom  had  been  entrusted  to  William  of  Longchamp, 
Bishop  of  Ely,  head  of  Church  and  State,  as  at  once  Justi- 
ciar  and  Papal  Legate.  Longchamp  was  loyal  to  the  king 
but  his  exactions  and  scorn  of  Englishmen  roused  a  fierce 
hatred  among  the  baronage,  and  this  hatred  found  a  head  in 
John,  traitor  to  his  brother  as  to  his  father.  John's  intrigues 
with  the  baronage  and  the  French  king  ended  at  last  in  open 


THE    FALL    OK    THE   ANGEVIN8.      1189    TO    1204.      143 

revolt,  which  was,  however,  checked  by  the  ability  of  the  now 
Primate,  Hubert  Walter  ;  and  Richard's  landing  in  1194  was 
followed  by 'his  brother's  complete  submission.  But  if  Hu- 
bert Walter  had  secured  order  in  England,  oversea  Richard 
found  himself  face  to  face  with  dangers  which  he  was  too 
clear-sighted  to  undervalue.  Destitute  of  his  father's  ad- 
ministrative genius,  less  ingenious  in  his  political  conceptions 
than  John,  Richard  was  far  from  being  a  mere  soldier.  A  love 
of  adventure,  a  pride  in  sheer  physical  strength)  here  and  there 
a  romantic  generosity,  jostled  roughly  with  the  craft,  the 
unscrupulousness,  the  violence  of  his  race  ;  but  he  was  at 
heart  a  statesman,  cool  and  patient  in  the  execution  of  his 
plans  as  he  was  bold  in  their  conception.  "  The  devil  is 
loose  ;  take  care  of  yourself,"  Philip  had  written  to  John  at 
the  news  of  the  king's  release.  In  the  French  king's  case  a 
restless  ambition  was  spurred  to  action  by  insults  which  he 
had  borne  during  the  Crusade,  and  he  had  availed  himself  of 
Richard's  imprisonment  to  invade  Normandy,  while  the  lords 
of  Aquitaine  rose  in  revolt  under  the  troubadour  Bertrand 
de  Born.  Jealousy  of  the  rule  of  strangers,  weariness  of  the 
turbulence  of  the  mercenary  soldiers  of  the  Angevins  or  of  the 
greed  and  oppression  of  their  financial  administration,  com- 
bined with  an  impatience  of  their  firm  government  and 
vigorous  justice  to  alienate  the  nobles  of  their  provinces  on 
the  Continent.  Loyalty  among  the  people  there  was  none  ; 
even  Anjou,  the  home  of  their  race,  drifted  towards  Philip 
as  steadily  as  Poitou.  But  in  warlike  ability  Richard  was 
more  than  Philip's  peer.  He  held  him  in  check  on  the 
Norman  frontier  and  surprised  his  treasure  at  Freteval,  while 
he  reduced  to  submission  the  rebels  of  Aquitaine.  England, 
drained  by  the  tax  for  Richard's  ransom,  groaned  under  its 
burdens  as  Hubert  Walter  raised  vast  sums  to  support  the 
army  of  mercenaries  which  Richard  led  against  his  foes. 

Crushing  taxation  had  wrung  from  England  wealth  which 
again  filled  the   royal  treasury,  and  during  a  short  truce 
Richard's   bribes    detached    Flanders    from    the 
French  alliance,  and  united  the  Counts  of  Chartres,     gouiard 
Champagne,  and  Boulogne  with  the  Bretons  in  a 
revolt  against  Philip.     He  won  a  valuable  aid  by  the  election 
of  his  nephew  Otto  to  the  German  throne,  and   his    envoy. 
William  Longchamp.  knitted  an  alliance  which  would  bring 


144  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  German  lances  to  bear  on  the  King  of  Paris.  But  the 
security  of  Normandy  was  requisite  to  the  success  of  these 
wider  plans,  and  Kichard  saw  that  its  defense  could  no  longer 
rest  on  the  loyalty  of  the  Norman  people.  His  father  might 
trace  his  descent  through  Matilda  from  the  line  of  Hrolf,  but 
the  Angevin  ruler  was  in  fact  a  stranger  to  the  Norman. 
It  was  impossible  for  a  Norman  to  recognize  his  Duke  with 
any  real  sympathy  in  the  Angevin  prince  whom  he  saw 
moving  along  the  border  at  the  head  of  Braban9on  merce- 
naries, in  whose  camp  the  old  names  of  the  Norman  baronage 
were  missing,  and  Merchade,  a  Proven9al  ruffian,  held  su- 
preme command.  The  purely  military  site  which  Richard 
selected  for  the  new  fortress  with  which  he  guarded  the 
border  showed  his  realization  of  the  fact  that  Normandy 
could  now  only  be  held  by  force  of  arms.  As  a  monument 
of  warlike  skill  his  "  Saucy  Castle,"  Chateau-Gaillard,  stands 
first  among  the  fortresses  of  the  middle  ages.  Richard  fixed 
its  site  where  the  Seine  bends  suddenly  at  Gaillon  in  a  great 
semicircle  to  the  north,  and  where  the  valley  of  Les  Andelys 
breaks  the  line  of  the  chalk  cliffs  along  its  banks.  Blue 
masses  of  woodland  crown  the  distant  hills  ;  within  the  river 
curve  lies  a  dull  reach  of  flat  meadow,  round  which  the  Seine, 
broken  with  green  islets,  and  dappled  with  the  gray  and  blue 
of  the  sky,  flashes  like  a  silver  bow  on  its  way  to  Rouen. 
The  castle  formed  a  part  of  an  intrenched  camp  which  Richard 
designed  to  cover  his  Norman  capital.  Approach  by  the 
river  was  blocked  by  a  stockade  and  a  bridge  of  boats,  by  a 
fort  on  the  islet  in  mid  stream,  and  by  the  fortified  town  which 
the  king  built  in  the  valley  of  the  Gambon,  then  an  impassable 
marsh.  In  the  angle  between  this  valley  and  the  Seine,  on 
a  spur  of  the  chalk  hills  which  only  a  narrow  neck  of  land 
connects  with  the  general  plateau,  rose  at  the  height  of  300 
feet  above  the  river  the  crowning  fortress  of  the  whole.  Its 
outworks  and  the  walls  which  connected  it  with  the  town 
and  stockade  have  for  the  most  part  gone,  but  time  and  the 
hand  of  man  have  done  little  to  destroy  the  fortifications 
themselves — the  fosse,  hewn  deep  into  the  solid  rock,  with 
casemates  hollowed  out  along  its  sides,  the  fluted  walls  of  the 
citadel,  the  huge  donjon  looking  down  on  the  brown  roofs 
and  huddled  gables  of  Les  Andelys.  Even  now  in  its  ruin 
we  can  understand  the  triumphant  outburst  of  its  royal 


THE  FALL   OF  THE   ANGEVINS.      1189   TO   1204.      145 

builder  as  he  saw  it  rising  against  the  sky  :  "  How  pretty  a 
child  is  mine,  this  child  of  but  one  year  old  1" 

The  easy  reduction  of  Normandy  on  the  fall  of  Chdteau- 
Gaillard  at  a  later  time  proved  Richard's  foresight ;  but 
foresight  and  sagacity  were  mingled  in  him  with 
a  brutal  violence  and  a  callous  indifference  to 
honor.  "  I  would  take  it,  were  its  walls  of  iron/' 
Philip  exclaimed  in  wrath  as  he  saw  the  fortress  rise.  "  I 
would  hold  it,  were  its  Avails  of  butter,"  was  the  defiant 
answer  of  his  foe.  It  was  Church  land,  and  the  Archbishop 
of  Rouen  laid  Normandy  under  interdict  at  its  seizure,  but 
the  king  met  the  interdict  with  mockery,  and  intrigued  with 
Rome  till  the  censure  was  withdrawn.  He  was  just  as  de- 
fiant of  a  "  rain  of  blood,"  whose  fall  scared  his  courtiers. 
"  Had  an  angel  from  heaven  bid  him  abandon  his  work," 
says  a  cool  observer,  "  he  would  have  answered  with  a 
curse."  The  twelvemonth's  hard  work,  in  fact,  by  securing 
the  Norman  frontier,  set  Richard  free  to  deal  his  long- 
planned  blow  at  Philip.  Money  only  was  wanting,  and  the 
king  listening  with  more  than  the  greed  of  his  race  to  the 
rumor  that  a  treasure  had  been  found  in  the  fields  of  the 
Limousin.  Twelve  knights  of  gold  seated  round  the  golden 
table  were  the  find,  it  was  said,  of  the  Lord  of  Chains. 
Treasure- trove  at  any  rate  there  was,  and  Richard  prowled 
around  the  walls,  but  the  castle  held  stubbornly  out  till  the 
king's  greed  passed  into  savage  menace  ;  he  would  hang 
all,  he  swore — man,  woman,  the  very  child  at  the  breast. 
In  the  midst  of  his  threats  an  arrow  from  the  walls  struck 
him  down.  He  died  as  he  had  lived,  owning  the  wild  passion 
which  for  seven  years  past  had  kept  him  from  confession 
lest  he  should  bo  forced  to  pardon  Philip,  forgiving  with 
kingly  generosity  the  archer  who  had  shot  him. 

The  Angevin  dominion  broke  to  pieces  at  his  death. 
John  was  acknowledged  as  king  in  England  and  Normandy, 
Aquitaine  was  secured  for  him  by  its  duchess,  his 
mother  ;  but  Anjou,  Maine,  and  Touraine  did 
homage  to  Arthur,  the  son  of  his  elder  brother 
Geoffry,  the  late  Duke  of  Britanny.  The  ambition  of  Philip, 
who  protected  his  cause,  turned  the  day  against  Arthur ; 
the  Angevins  rose  against  the  French  garrisons  with  which 
the  French  king  practically  annexed  the  country,  tnirl  John 


146  HISTOKY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

was  at  last  owned  as  master  of  the  whole  dominion  of  his 
house.  A  fresh  outbreak  of  war  in  Poiton  was  fatal  to  his 
rival ;  surprised  at  the  siege  of  Mirebeau  by  a  rapid  march 
of  the  king,  Arthur  was  taken  prisoner  to  Kouen,  and 
murdered  there,  as  men  believed,  by  his  uncle's  hand.  The 
brutal  outrage  at  once  roused  the  French  provinces  in  re- 
volt, while  the  French  king  marched  straight  on  Normandy. 
The  ease  with  which  its  conquest  was  effected  can  only  be 
.  explained  by  the  utter  absence  of  any  popular  resistance  on 
the  part  of  the  Normans  themselves.  Half  a  century  before 
the  sight  of  a  Frenchman  in  the  land  would  have  roused  every 
peasant  to  arms  from  Avranches  to  Dieppe,  but  town  after 
town  surrendered  at  the  mere  summons  of  Philip,  and  the 
conquest  was  hardly  over  before  Normandy  settled  down  into 
the  most  loyal  of  the  provinces  of  France.  Much  of  this 
was  due  to  the  wise  liberality  with  which  Philip  met  the 
claims  of  the  towns  to  independence  and  self-government,  as 
well  as  to  the  overpowering  force  and  military  ability  with 
which  the  conquest  was  effected.  But  the  utter  absence  of  all 
opposition  sprang  from  a  deeper  cause.  To  the  Norman  his 
transfer  from  John  to  Philip  was  a  mere  passing  from  one 
foreign  master  to  another,  and  foreigner  for  foreigner  Philip 
was  the  less  alien  of  the  two.  Between  France  and  Normandy 
there  had  been  as  many  years  of  friendship  as  of  strife ;  between 
Norman  and  Angevin  lay  a  century  of  bitterest  hate.  More- 
over, the  subjection  to  France  was  the  realization  in  fact  of 
a  dependence  which  had  always  existed  in  theory  ;  Philip 
entered  Eouen  as  the  overlord  of  its  dukes  ;  while  the  sub- 
mission to  the  house  of  Anjou  had  been  the  most  humiliating 
of  all  submissions,  the  submission  to  an  equal. 

It  was  the  consciousness  of  this  temper  in  the  Norman 
people  that  forced  John  to  abandon  all  hope  of  resistance  on 
the  failure  of  his  attempt  to  relieve  Chateau-Gaillard,  by  the 
siege  of  which  Philip  commenced  his  invasion.  The  skill 
with  which  the  combined  movements  for  its  relief  were 
planned  proved  the  king's  military  ability.  The  besiegers 
were  parted  into  two  masses  by  the  Seine  ;  the  bulk  of  their 
forces  were  camped  in  the  level  space  within  the  bend  of  the 
river,  while  one  division  was  thrown  across  it  to  occupy  the 
vulley  of  the  Gambon,  and  sweep  the  country  around  of  its 
provisions.  John  proposed  to  cut  the  French  army  in  two 


THE  FALL   OF   THE   ANGEVINS.      1189   TO   1204.      147 

by  destroying  the  bridge  of  boats  which  formed  the  only 
communication  between  the  two  bodies,  while  the  whole  of 
his  own  forces  flung  themselves  on  the  rear  of  the  French 
division  encamped  in  the  cul-de-sac  formed  by  the- river- 
bend,  and  without  any  exit  save  the  bridge.  Had  the  attack 
been  carried  out  as  ably  as  it  was  planned,  it  must  have 
ended  in  Philip's  ruin  ;  but  the  two  assaults  were  not  made 
simultaneously,  and  were  successively  repulsed.  The  repulse 
was  followed  by  the  utter  collapse  of  the  military  system  by 
which  the  Angevins  had  held  Normandy  ;  John's  treasury 
was  exhausted,  and  his  mercenaries  passed  over  to  the  foe. 
The  king's  despairing  appeal  to  the  duchy  itself  came  too 
late  ;  its  nobles  were  already  treating  with  Philip,  and  the 
towns  were  incapable  of  resisting  the  siege  train  of  the 
French.  It  was  despair  of  any  aid  from  Normandy  that 
drove  John  oversea  to  seek  it  as  fruitlessly  from  England, 
but  with  the  fall  of  Chateau-Gaillard,  after  a  gallant  struggle, 
the  province  passed  without  a  struggle  into  the  French 
king's  hands.  In  1204  Philip  turned  on  the  south  with  as 
startling  a  success.  Maine,  Anjou,  and  Touraine  passed 
with  little  resistance  into  his  hands,  and  the  death  of  Eleanor 
was  followed  by  the  submission  of  the  bulk  of  Aquitaine. 
Little  was  left  save  the  country  south  of  the  Garonne  ;  and 
from  the  lordship  of  a  vast  empire  that  stretched  from  the 
Tyue  to  the  Pyrenees  John  saw  himself  reduced  at  a  blow  to 
the  realm  of  England.  On  the  loss  of  Chdteau-Gaillard  in 
fact  hung  the  destinies  of  England,  and  the  interest  that 
attaches  one  to  the  grand  ruin  on  the  heights  of  Les  Audelys 
is,  that  it  represents  the  ruin  of  a  system  as  well  as  of  a 
camp.  From  its  dark  donjon  and  broken  walls  we  see  not 
merely  the  pleasant  vale  of  Seine,  but  the  sedgy  flats  of  our 
own  Kunnymede. 


148  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  GREAT  CHARTER. 

1204—1365. 

Section  I.— English  I/iteratttre  under  the  Norman  and 
Angevin  Kings. 

[Authorities. — For  the  general  literature  of  this  period,  see  Mr.  Morley's  "  Eng- 
lish Writers  from  the  Conquest  to  Chaucer,"  vol.  i.  part  ii.  The  prefaces  of  Mr. 
Brewer  and  Mr.  Dimock  to  his  collected  works  in  the  Rolls  Series  give  all  that  can 
be  known  of  Gerald  de  Barri.  The  Poems  of  Walter  Map  have  been  edited  by  Mr. 
Wright  for  the  Camden  Society  ;  Layamon,  by  Sir  F.  Madden.] 

IT  is  in  a  review  of  the  literature  of  England  during  the 
period  that  we  have  just  traversed  that  we  shall  best  under- 
stand the  new  English  people  with  which  John, 
^Revival"7  wnen  driven  from  Normandy,  found  himself  face 
to  face. 

In  his  contest  with  Beket,  Henry  the  Second  had  been 
powerfully  aided  by  the  silent  revolution  which  now  began 
to  part  the  purely  literary  class  from  the  purely  clerical. 
During  the  earlier  ages  of  our  history  we  have  seen  literature 
springing  up  in  ecclesiastical  schools,  and  protecting  itself 
against  the  ignorance  and  violence  of  the  time  under  eccle- 
siastical privileges.  Almost  all  our  writers  from  Baeda  to 
the  days  of  the  Angevins  are  clergy  or  monks.  The  revival 
of  letters  which  followed  the  Conquest  was  a  purely  eccles- 
iastical revival ;  the  intellectual  impulse  which  Bee  had 
given  to  Normandy  traveled  across  the  Channel  with  the 
new  Norman  abbots  who  were  established  in  the  greater 
English  monasteries  ;  and  writing-rooms  or  scriptoria,  where 
the  chief  works  of  Latin  literature,  patristic  or  classical, 
were  copied  and  illuminated,  the  lives  of  saints  compiled,  and 
entries  noted  in  the  monastic  chronicle,  formed  from  this 
time  a  part  of  every  religious  house  of  any  importance.  But 
the  literature  which  found  this  religious  shelter  was  not  so 
innch  ecclesiastical  as  secular.  Even  the  philosophical  and 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE.      1042   TO   1204.  149 

devotional  impulse  given  by  Anselm  produced  no  English 
work  of  theology  or  metaphysics.  The  literary  revival  which 
followed  the  Conquest  took  mainly  the  old  historical  form. 
At  Durham,  Turgot  and  Simeon  threw  into  Latin  shape  the 
national  annals  to  the  time  of  Henry  the  First  with  an 
especial  regard  to  northern  affairs,  while  the  earlier  events  of 
Stephen's  reign  were  noted  down  by  two  Priors  of  Hexham 
in  the  wild  borderland  between  England  and  the  Scots. 
These  however  were  the  colorless  jottings  of  mere  annalists  ; 
it  was  in  the  Scriptorium  of  Canterbury,  in  Osbern's  lives  of 
the  English  saints,  or  in  Eadmer's  record  of  the  struggle 
of  Anselm  against  the  Red  King  and  his  successor,  that  we 
see  the  first  indications  of  a  distinctively  English  feeling 
telling  on  the  new  literature.  The  national  impulse  is  yet 
more  conspicuous  in  the  two  historians  that  followed.  The 
war-songs  of  the  English  conquerors  of  Britain  were  pre- 
served by  Henry,  an  Archdeacon  of  Huntingdon,  who  wove 
them  into  annals  compiled  from  Baeda  and  the  Chronicle  ; 
while  William,  the  librarian  of  Malmesbury,  as  industriously 
collected  the  lighter  ballads  which  embodied  the  popular 
traditions  of  the  English  kings. 

It  is  in  William  above  all  others  that  we  see  the  new  tend- 
ency of  English  literature.  In  himself,  as  in  his  work,  he 
marks  the  fusion  of  the  conquerors  and  the  con-  Literature 
quered,  for  he  was  of  both  English  and  Norman  and  the 
parentage,  and  his  sympathies  were  as  divided  as  Court, 
his  blood.  The  form  and  style  of  his  writings  show  the  in- 
fluence of  those  classical  studies  which  were  now  reviving 
throughout  Christendom.  Monk  as  he  is,  he  discards  the 
older  ecclesiastical  models  and  the  annalistic  form.  Events 
are  grouped  together  with  no  strict  reference  to  time,  while 
the  lively  narrative  flows  rapidly  and  loosely  along,  with  con- 
stant breaks  of  digression  over  the  general  history  of  Europe 
and  the  Church.  It  is  in  this  change  of  historic  spirit  that 
William  takes  his  place  as  first  of  the  more  statesmanlike  and 
philosophic  school  of  historians  who  began  soon  to  arise  in 
direct  connection  with  the  Court,  and  amongst  whom  the 
author  of  the  chronicle  which  commonly  bears  the  name  of 
"  Benedict  of  Peterborough,"  with  his  continuator  Roger  of 
Howden.  are  the  most  conspicuous.  Both  held  judicial  of- 
fices under  Henry  the  Second,  and  it  is  to  their  position  at 


150  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Court  that  they  owe  the  fulness  and  accuracy  of  their  infor- 
mation as  to  affairs  at  home  and  abroad,  their  copious  sup- 
ply of  official  documents,  and  the  purely  political  temper 
with  which  they  regard  the  conflict  of  Church  and  State  in 
their  time.  The  same  freedom  from  ecclesiastical  bias,  com- 
bined with  remarkable  critical  ability,  is  found  in  the  history 
of  William,  the  Canon  of  Newburgh,  who  wrote  far  away  in 
his  Yorkshire  monastery.  The  English  court,  however,  had 
become  the  center  of  a  distinctly  secular  literature.  The 
treatise  of  Kami  If  de  Glanvill,  the  justiciar  of  Henry  the 
Second,  is  the  earliest  work  on  English  law,  as  that  of  the 
royal  treasurer,  Kichard  Fitz-Neal,  on  the  Exchequer  is  the 
earliest  on  English  government. 

Still  more  distinctly  secular  than  these,  though  the  work 
of  a  priest  who  claimed  to  be  a  bishop,  are  the  writings  of 

Gerald  de  Barri.      Gerald  is  the  father  of  our 
Wales       popular  literature,  as  he  is  the  originator  of  the 

political  ecclesiastical  and  pamphlet.  Welsh  blood 
(as  his  usual  name  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis  implies)  mixed 
with  Norman  in  his  veins,  and  something  of  the  restless 
Celtic  fire  runs  alike  through  his  writings  and  his  life.  A 
busy  scholar  at  Paris,  a  reforming  archdeacon  in  Wales,  the 
wittiest  of  Court  chaplains,  the  most  troublesome  of  bishops, 
Gerald  became  the  gayest  and  most  amusing  of  all  the  authors 
of  his  time.  In  his  hands  the  stately  Latin  tongue  took  the 
vivacity  and  picturesqueness  of  the  jongleur's  verse.  Reared 
as  he  had  been  in  classical  studies,  he  threw  pedantry  con- 
temptuously aside.  "  It  is  better  to  be  dumb  than  not  to  be 
understood,"  is  his  characteristic  apology  for  the  novelty  of 
his  style  :  "  new  times  require  new  fashions,  and  so  I  have 
thrown  utterly  aside  the  old  and  dry  method  of  some  authors, 
and  aimed  at  adopting  the  fashion  of  speech  which  is  actually 
in  vogue  to-day."  His  tract  on  the  conquest  of  Ireland  and 
his  account  of  Wales,  which  arc  in  fact  reports  of  two  jour- 
neys undertaken  in  those  countries  with  John  and  Arch- 
bishop Baldwin,  illustrate  his  rapid  faculty  of  careless  ob- 
servation, his  audacity,  and  his  good  sense.  They  are  just 
the  sort  of  lively,  dashing  letters  that  wo  find  in  the  corre- 
spondence of  a  modern  journal.  There  is  the  same  modern 
tone  in  his  political  pamphlets  ;  his  profusion  of  jests,  his 
fund  of  anecdote,  the  aptness  of  his  quotations,  his  natural 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE.      1042   TO   1204.  161 

shrewdness  and  critical  acumen,  the  clearness  and  vivacity 
of  his  style,  are  backed  by  a  fearlessness  and  impetuosity  that 
made  him  a  dangerous  assailant  even  to  such  a  ruler  as  Henry 
the  Second.  The  invectives  in  which  Gerald  poured  out  his 
resentment  against  the  Angevins  are  the  cause  of  half  the 
scandal  about  Henry  and  his  sons  which  has  found  its  way 
into  history.  His  life  was  wasted  in  an  ineffectual  struggle 
to  secure  the  see  of  St.  David's,  but  his  pungent  pen  played 
its  part  in  rousing  the  spirit  of  the  nation  to  its  struggle 
with  the  crown. 

A  tone  of  distinct  hostility  to  the  Church  developed  itself 
almost  from  the  first  among  the  singers  of  romance.  Ro- 
mance had  long  before  taken  root  in  the  court  of 
Henry  the  First,  where  under  the  patronage  of  Romance. 
Queen  Maud  the  dreams  of  Arthur,  so  long  cher- 
ished by  the  Celts  of  Britanny,  and  which  had  traveled  to 
Wales  in  the  train  of  the  exile  Rhys  ap  Tewdor,  took  shape 
in  the  History  of  the  Britons  by  Geoffry  of  Monmouth. 
Myth,  legend,  tradition,  the  classical  pedantry  of  the  day, 
Welsh  hopes  of  future  triumph  over  the  Saxon,  the  memories 
of  the  Crusades  and  of  the  world-wide  dominion  of  Charles 
the  Great,  were  mingled  together  by  this  daring  fabulist  in  a 
work  whose  popularity  became  at  once  immense.  Alfred  of 
Beverley  transferred  Geoffry's  inventions  into  the  region  of 
sober  history,  while  two  Norman  Irouvbres,  Gaimar  and 
Wace,  translated  them  into  French  verse.  So  complete  was 
the  credence  they  obtained,  that  Arthur's  tomb  at  Glaston- 
bury  was  visited  by  Henry  the  Second,  while  the  child  of  his 
son  Geoffry  and  of  Constance  of  Britanny  bore  the  name  of 
the  Celtic  hero.  Out  of  Geoffry's  creation  grew  little  by 
little  the  poem  of  the  Table  Round.  Britanny,  which  had 
mingled  with  the  story  of  Arthur  the  older  and  more  mys- 
terious legend  of  the  Enchanter  Merlin,  lent  that  of  Lancelot 
to  the  wandering  minstrels  of  the  day,  who  molded  it,  as 
they  wandered  from  hall  to  hall,  into  the  familiar  tale  of 
knighthood  wrested  from  its  loyalty  by  the  love  of  woman. 
The  stories  of  Tristram  and  Gawayne,  at  first  as  independent 
as  that  of  Lancelot,  were  drawn  with  it  into  the  whirlpool  of 
Arthurian  romance  ;  and  when  the  Church,  jealous  of  the 
popularity  of  the  legends  of  chivalry,  invented  as  a  counter- 
acting influence  the  poem  of  the  Sacred  Dish,  the  San  Graal 


152  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

which  held  the  blood  of  the  Cross  invisible  to  all  eyes  but 
those  of  the  pure  in  heart,  the  genius  of  a  court  poet,  Walter 
de  Map,  wove  the  rival  legends  together,  sent  Arthur  and  his 
knights  wandering  over  sea  and  land  in  the  quest  of  the  San 
Graal,  and  crowned  the  work  by  the  figure  of  Sir  Galahad, 
the  type  of  ideal  knighthood,  without  fear  and  without 
reproach. 

Walter  stands  before  us  as  the  representative  of  a  sudden 
outburst  of  literary,  social,  and  religious  criticism  which 
followed  the  growth  of  romance  and  the  appear- 
M^f  '  ance  of  a  freer  historical  tone  in  the  court  of  the 
two  Henries.  Born  on  the  Welsh  border,  a 
student  at  Paris,  a  favorite  with  the  king,  a  royal  chaplain, 
justiciar,  and  ambassador,  the  genius  of  Walter  de  Map  was 
as  various  as  it  was  prolific.  He  is  as  much  at  his  ease  in 
sweeping  together  the  chit-chat  of  the  time  in  his  "  Courtly 
Trifles  "  as  in  creating  the  character  of  Sir  Galahad.  But 
he  only  rose  to  his  fullest  strength  when  he  turned  from  the 
fields  of  romance  to  that  of  Church  reform,  and  embodied 
the  ecclesiastical  abuses  of  his  day  in  the  figure  of  his 
"  Bishop  Goliath/'  The  whole  spirit  of  Henry  and  his 
court  in  their  struggle  with  Beket  is  reflected  and  illustrated 
in  the  apocalypse  and  confession  of  this  imaginary  prelate. 
Picture  after  picture  strips  the  veil  from  the  corruption  of  the 
medieval  Church,  its  indolence,  its  thirst  for  gain,  its  secret 
immorality.  The  whole  body  of  the  clergy,  from  Pope  to 
hedge-priest,  is  painted  as  busy  in  the  chase  for  gain  ;  what 
escapes  the  bishop  is  snapped  up  by  the  archdeacon,  what 
escapes  the  archdeacon  is  nosed  and  hunted  down  by  the 
dean,  while  a  host  of  minor  officials  prowl  hungrily  around 
these  greater  marauders.  Out  of  the  crowd  of  figures  which 
fills  the  canvas  of  the  satirist,  pluralist  vicars,  abbots 
'•'  purple  as  their  wines,"  monks  feeding  and  chattering  to- 
gether like  parrots  in  the  refectory,  rises  the  Philistine 
Bishop,  light  of  purpose,  void  of  conscience,  lost  in  sensu- 
ality, drunken,  unchaste,  the  Goliath  who  sums  up  the  enor- 
mities of  all,  and  against  whose  forehead  this  new  David 
slings  his  sharp  pebble  of  the  brook. 

It  is  only,  however,  as  the  writings  of  Englishmen  that 
Latin  or  French  works  like  these  can  be  claimed  as  part  of 
English  literature.  The  spoken  tongue  of  the  nation  at  large 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE.      1042   TO   1204.  153 

remained  of  course  English  as  before ;  William  himself  had 
tried  to  learn  it  that  he  might  administer  justice  to  his  sub- 
jects ;  and  for  a  century  after  the  Conquest  only  Bevival  Of 
a  few  new  words  crept  in  from  the  language  of  the  English 
the  conquerors.  Even  English  literature,  ban-  tongue, 
ished  as  it  was  from  the  court  of  the  stranger  and  exposed  to 
the  fashionable  rivalry  of  Latin  scholars,  survived  not  only 
in  religious  works,  in  poetic  paraphrases  of  gospels  and 
psalms,  but  in  the  great  monument  of  our  prose,  the  English 
Chronicle.  It  was  not  till  the  miserable  reign  of  Stephen 
that  the  Chronicle  died  out  in  the  Abbey  of  Peterborough. 
But  the  "  Sayings  of  Alfred,"  which  embodied  the  ideal  of 
an  English  king  and  gathered  a  legendary  worship  round  the 
great  name  of  the  English  past,  show  a  native  literature 
going  on  through  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Second.  The  ap- 
pearance of  a  great  work  of  English  verse  coincides  in  point 
of  time  with  the  loss  of  Normandy,  and  the  return  of  John 
to  his  island  realm.  "  There  was  a  priest  in  the  land  whose 
name  was  Layamon  ;  he  was  son  of  Leoveuath  :  may  the 
Lord  be  gracious  to  him  !  He  dwelt  at  Earnly,  a  noble 
church  on  the  bank  of  Severn  (good  it  seemed  to  him  !)  near 
Radstone,  where  he  read  books.  It  came  in  mind  to  him 
and  in  his  chiefest  thought  that  he  would  tell  the  noble  deeds 
of  England,  what  the  men  were  named,  and  whence  they 
came,  who  first  had  English  land."  Journeying  far  and 
wide  over  the  land,  the  priest  of  Earnly  found  Baeda  and 
Wace,  the  books  too  of  S.  Albin  and  S.  Austin.  "  Layamou 
laid  down  these  books  and  turned  the  leaves  ;  he  beheld  them 
lovingly  :  may  the  Lord  be  gracious  to  him  !  Pen  he  took 
with  fingers  and  wrote  a  book-skin,  and  the  true  words  set 
together,  and  compressed  the  three  books  into  one."  Laya- 
mon's  church  is  now  Areley,  near  Bewdley,  in  Worcester- 
shire. His  poem  was  in  fact  an  expansion  of  Wace's 
"  Brut/'  with  insertions  from  Baeda.  Historically  it  is 
worthless,  but  as  a  monument  of  our  language  it  is  beyond 
all  price.  After  Norman  and  Angevin  English  remained 
unchanged.  In  more  than  thirty  thousand  lines  not  more 
than  fifty  Norman  words  are  to  be  found.  Even  the  old 
poetic  tradition  remains  the  same  ;  the  alliterative  meter  of 
the  earlier  verse  is  only  slightly  affected  by  riming  termina- 
tions, the  similes  are  the  few  natural  similes  of  Caedmon,  thr 


154  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

battles  are  painted  with  the  same  rough,  simple  joy.  It  is 
by  no  mere  accident  that  the  English  tongue  thus  wakes 
again  into  written  life  on  the  eve  of  the  great  struggle  be- 
tween the  nation  and  its  king.  The  artificial  forms  imposed 
by  the  Conquest  were  falling  away  from  the  people  as  from 
its  literature,  and  a  new  England,  quickened  by  the  Celtic 
vivacity  of  de  Map  and  the  Norman  daring  of  Gerald,  stood 
forth  to  its  conflict  with  John. 


Section  II.— John.    1304—1215. 

[Authorities. — Our  chief  sources  of  information  are  the  Chronicle  embodied  in 
the  "  Memoriale  "  of  Walter  of  Coventry  ;  and  the  "  Chronicle  of  Roger  of  Wen- 
dover,"  the  first  of  the  published  annalists  of  S.  Alban's,  whose  work  was  subse- 
quently revised  and  continued  in  a  more  patriotic  tone  by  another  monk  of  the 
same  abbey,  Matthew  Paris.  The  Annals  of  Waverley,  Dunstable,  and  Burton  are 
important  for  the  period.  The  great  series  of  the  Royal  Rolls  begin  now  to  be  of 
the  highest  value.  The  French  authorities  as  before.  For  Langton,  see  Hook's 
biography  in  the  "  Lives  of  the  Archbishops."  The  best  modern  account  of  this 
reign  is  in  Mr.  Pearson's  "  History  of  England,"  vol.  ii.] 

"  Foul  as  it  is,  hell  itself  is  defiled  by  the  fouler  presence 
of  John."  The  terrible  verdict  of  the  king's  contemporaries 

has  passed  into  the  sober  judgment  of  history. 
John.  Externally  John  possessed  all  the  quickness,  the 

vivacity,  the  cleverness,  the  good-humor,  the 
social  charm  which  distinguished  his  house.  His  worst 
enemies  owned  that  he  toiled  steadily  and  closely  at  the 
work  of  administration.  He  was  fond  of  learned  men  like 
Gerald  of  Wales.  He  had  a  strange  gift  of  attracting 
friends  and  of  winning  the  love  of  women.  But  in  his 
inner  soul  John  was  the  worst  outcome  of  the  Angevins.  He 
united  into  one  mass  of  wickedness  their  insolence,  their 
selfishness,  their  unbridled  lust,  their  cruelty  and  tyranny, 
their  shamelesstiess,  their  superstition,  their  cynical  indiffer- 
ence to  honor  or  truth.  In  mere  boyhood  he  had  torn  with 
brutal  levity  the  beards  of  the  Irish  chieftains  who  came  to 
own  him  as  their  lord.  His  ingratitude  and  perfidy  had" 
brought  down  his  father  with  sorrow  to  the  grave.  To  his 
brother  he  had  been  the  worst  of  traitors.  All  Christendom 
believed  him  to  be  the  murderer  of  his  nephew,  Arthur  of 
Britanny.  He  abandoned  one  wife  and  was  faithless  to  an- 
other. His  punishments  were  refinements  of  cruelty — the 


JOHN.    1204  TO  1215.  155 

starvation  of  children,  the  crushing  old  men  under  copes  or 
lead.  His  court  was  a  brothel  where  no  woman  was  safe 
from  the  royal  lust,  and  where  his  cynicism  loved  to  publish 
the  news  of  his  victims'  shame.  He  was  as  craven  in  his 
superstition  as  he  was  daring  in  his  impiety.  He  scoffed  at 
priests  and  turned  his  back  on  the  mass  even  amidst  the 
solemnities  of  his  coronation,  but  he  never  stirred  on  a  jour- 
ney without  hanging  relics  round  his  neck.  But  with  the 
supreme  wickedness  of  his  race  he  inherited  its  profound 
ability.  His  plan  for  the  relief  of  Chateau-Gaillard,  the 
rapid  march  by  which  he  shattered  Arthur's  hopes  at  Mire- 
beau,  showed  an  inborn  genius  for  war.  In  the  rapidity  and 
breadth  of  his  political  combinations  he  far  surpassed  the 
statesmen  of  his  time.  Throughout  his  reign  we  see  him 
quick  to  discern  the  difficulties  of  his  position,  and  inex- 
hanstible  in  the  resources  with  which  he  met  them.  The 
overthrow  of  his  continental  power  only  spurred  him  to  the 
formation  of  a  great  league  which  all  but  brought  Philip  to 
the  ground  ;  and  the  sudden  revolt  of  all  England  was  par- 
ried by  a  shameless  alliance  with  the  Papacy.  The  closer 
study  of  John's  history  clears  away  the  charges  of  sloth  and 
incapacity  with  which  men  tried  to  explain  the  greatness  of 
his  fall.  The  awful  lesson  of  his  life  rests  on  the  fact  that  it 
was  no  weak  and  indolent  voluptuary,  but  the  ablest  and 
most  ruthless  of  the  Angevin s  who  lost  Normandy,  became 
the  vassal  of  the  Pope,  and  perished  in  a  struggle  of  despair 
against  the  English  freedom. 

The  whole  energies  of  the  king  were  bent  on  the  recovery 
of  his  lost  dominions  on  the  Continent.  He  impatiently 
collected  money  and  men  for  the  support  of  the 
adherents  of  the  House  of  Anjou  who  were  still 
struggling  against  the  arms  of  France  in  Poitou 
and  Guienne,  and  had  assembled  an  army  at  Portsmouth  in 
the  summer  of  1205,  when  his  project  was  suddenly  thwarted 
by  the  resolute  opposition  of  the  Primate  and  the  Earl  of 
Pembroke,  William  Marshall.  So  completely  had  both  the 
baronage  and  the  Church  been  humbled  by  his  father,  that 
the  attitude  of  their  representatives  indicated  the  new  spirit 
of  national  freedom  which  was  rising  around  the  king.  John 
at  once  braced  himself  to  a  struggle  witli  it.  The  death  of 
Hubert  Walter,  a  few  weeks  after  his  protest,  enabled  him, 


156  HISTORY    OF    THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

as  it  seemed  to  neutralize  the  opposition  of  the  Church  by 
placing  a  creature  of  his  own  at  its  head.  John  de  Grey, 
Bishop  of  Norwich,  was  elected  by  the  monks  of  Canterbury 
at  his  bidding  and  enthroned  as  Primate.  In  a  previous 
though  informal  gathering,  however,  the  convent  had  already 
chosen  its  sub-prior,  Reginald,  as  Archbishop,  and  the  rival 
claimants  hastened  to  appeal  to  Eome  ;  but  the  result  of 
their  appeal  was  a  startling  one  both  for  themselves  and  for 
the  king.  Innocent  the  Third,  who  now  occupied  the  Papal 
throne,  had  pushed  its  claims  of  supremacy  over  Christen- 
dom further  than  any  of  his  predecessors  :  after  a  careful 
examination  he  quashed  both  the  contested  elections.  The 
decision  was  probably  a  just  one  ;  but  Innocent  did  not 
stop  there  ;  whether  from  love  of  power,  or,  as  may  fairly  be 
supposed,  in  despair  of  a  free  election  within  English  bounds, 
he  commanded  the  monks  who  appeared  before  him  to  elect 
in  his  presence  Stephen  Langton  to  the  archiepiscopal  see. 
Personally  a  better  choice  could  not  have  been  made,  for 
Stephen  was  a  man  who  by  sheer  weight  of  learning  and 
holiness  of  life  had  risen  to  the  dignity  of  Cardinal,  and 
whose  after  career  placed  him  in  the  front  rank  of  English 
patriots.  But  in  itself  the  step  was  an  usurpation  of  the 
rights  both  of  the  Church  and  of  the  Crown.  The  king 
at  once  met  it  with  resistance,  and  replied  to  the  Papal 
threats  of  interdict  if  Langton  were  any  longer  excluded 
from  his  see,  by  a  counter  threat  that  the  interdict  should  be 
followed  by  the  banishment  of  the  clergy  and  the  mutilation 
of  every  Italian  he  could  seize  in  the  realm.  Innocent,  how- 
ever was  not  a  man  to  draw  back  from  his  purpose,  and  the  in- 
terdict fell  at  last  upon  the  land.  All  worship  save  that  of 
a  few  privileged  orders,  all  administration  of  the  Sacraments 
save  that  of  private  baptism,  ceased  over  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  country  :  the  church-bells  were  silent,  the 
dead  lay  unburied  on  the  ground.  The  king  replied  by  con- 
fiscating the  lands  of  the  clergy  who  observed  the  interdict, 
by  subjecting  them  in  spite  of  their  privileges  to  the  royal 
courts,  and  often  by  leaving  outrages  on  them  unpunished. 
"Let  him  go/'  said  John,  when  a  Welshman  was  brought  before 
him  for  the  murder  of  a  priest,  "  he  has  killed  my  enemy  ! " 
A  year  passed  before  the  Pope  proceeded  to  the  further  sen- 
tence of  excommunication.  John  was  now  formally  cut  off 


JOHN.     1204  TO  1215.  157 

from  the  pale  of  the  Church  ;  but  the  new  sentence  was  met 
with  the  same  defiance  as  the  old.  Five  of  the  bishops  fled 
over  the  sea,  and  secret  disaffection  was  spreading  widely, 
but  there  was  no  public  avoidance  of  the  excommunicated 
king.  An  Archdeacon  of  Norwich  who  withdrew  from  his 
service  was  crushed  to  death  under  a  cope  of  lead,  and  the 
hint  was  sufficient  to  prevent  either  prelate  or  noble  from 
following  his  example.  Though  the  king  stood  alone,  with 
nobles  estranged  from  him  and  the  Church  against  him,  his 
strength  seemed  utterly  unbroken.  From  the  first  moment 
of  his  rule 'John  had  defied  the  baronage.  The  promise  to 
satisfy  their  demand  for  redress  of  wrongs  in  the  past  reign, 
a  promise  made  at  his  election,  remained  unfulfilled  ;  when 
the  demand  was  repeated  he  answered  it  by  seizing  their 
castles  and  taking  their  children  as  hostages  for  their  loyalty. 
The  cost  of  his  fruitless  threats  of  war  had  been  met  by 
heavy  and  repeated  taxation.  The  quarrel  with  the  Church 
and  fear  of  their  revolt  only  deepened  his  oppression  of  the 
nobles.  He  drove  De  Braose,  one  of  the  most  powerful  of 
the  Lord  Marchers,  to  die  in  exile,  while  his  wife  and  grand- 
children were  believed  to  have  been  starved  to  death  in  the 
royal  prisons.  On  the  nobles  who  still  clung  panic-stricken 
to  the  court  of  the  excommunicate  king  John  heaped  out- 
rages worse  than  death.  Illegal  exactions,  the  seizure  of 
their  castles,  the  preference  shown  to  foreigners,  were  small 
provocations  compared  with  his  attacks  on  the  honor  of  their 
wives  and  daughters.  But  the  baronage  still  submitted  ;  and 
the  king's  vigor  was  seen  by  the  rapidity  with  which  he 
crushed  a  rising  of  the  nobles  in  Ireland,  and  foiled  an  out- 
break of  the  Welsh.  Hated  as  he  was  the  land  remained 
still.  Only  one  weapon  now  remained  in  Innocent's  hands. 
An  excommunicate  king  had  ceased  to  be  a  Christian,  or  to 
have  claims  on  the  obedience  of  Christian  subjects.  As 
spiritual  heads  of  Christendom,  the  Popes  had  ere  now  assert- 
ed their  right  to  remove  such  a  ruler  from  his  throne  and  to 
give  it  to  a  worthier  than  he  ;  and  this  right  Innocent  at  last 
felt  himself  driven  to  exercise.  He  issued  a  bull  of  dispo- 
sition against  John,  proclaimed  a  crusade  against  him,  and 
committed  the  execution  of  his  sentence  to  Philip  of  France. 
John  met  it  with  the  same  scorn  as  before.  His  insolent 
disdain  suffered  the  Roman  legate,  Cardinal  Pandulf,  to  pro- 


158  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

claim  his  disposition  to  his  face  at  Northampton.  An 
enormous  army  gathered  at  his  call  on  Barham  Down  ;  and  the 
English  fleet  dispelled  all  danger  of  invasion  by  crossing  the 
Channel,  by  capturing  a  number  of  French  ships,  and  by 
burning  Dieppe. 

But  it  was  not  in  England  only  that  the  king  showed  his 
strength  and  activity.  Vile  as  he  was,  John  possessed  in  a 
high  degree  the  political  ability  of  his  race,  and 
*n  tne  diplomatic  efforts  with  which  he  met  the 
danger  from  France  he  showed  himself  his  father's 
equal.  The  barons  of  Poitou  were  roused  to  attack  Philip 
from  the  south.  John  bought  the  aid  of  the  Count  of 
Flanders  on  his  northern  border.  The  German  King,  Otto/ 
pledged  himself  to  bring  the  knighthood  of  Germany  to  sup 
port  an  invasion  of  France.  But  at  the  moment  of  his  suc- 
cess in  diplomacy  John  suddenly  gave  way.  It  was  in  fact 
the  revelation  of  a  danger  at  home  which  shook  him  from  his 
attitude  of  contemptuous  defiance.  The  bull  of  deposition 
gave  fresh  energy  to  every  enemy.  The  Scotch  king  was  in 
correspondence  with  Innocent.  The  Welsh  princes  who  had 
just  been  forced  to  submission  broke  out  again  in  war.  John 
hanged  their  hostages,  and  called  his  host  to  muster  for  a 
fresh  inroad  into  Wales,  but  the  army  met  only  to  become  a 
fresh  source  of  danger.  Powerless  to  resist  openly,  the 
baronage  had  plunged  almost  to  a  man  into  secret  conspira- 
cies ;  many  promised  aid  to  Philip  on  his  landing.  John,  in 
the  midst  of  hidden  enemies,  was  only  saved  by  the  haste 
with  which  he  disbanded  his  army  and  took  refuge  in 
Nottingham  Castle.  His  daring  self-confidence,  the  skill  of 
his  diplomacy,  could  no  longer  hide  from  him  the  utter  lone- 
liness of  his  position.  At  war  with  Borne,  with  France,  with 
Scotland,  Ireland  and  Wales,  at  war  with  the  Church,  he  saw 
himself  disarmed  by  this  sudden  revelation  of  treason  in  the 
one  force  left  at  his  disposal.  With  characteristic  suddenness 
he  gave  way.  He  endeavored  by  remission  of  fines  to  win 
back  his  people.  He  negotiated  eagerly  with  the  Pope, 
consented  to  receive  the  Archbishop,  and  promised  to  repay 
the  money  he  had  extorted  from  the  Church.  The  shameless 
ingenuity  of  the  king's  temper  was  seen  in  his  immediate 
resolve  to  make  Home  his  ally,  to  turn  its  spiritual  thunder 
against  his  foes,  to  use  it  in  breaking  up  the  confederacy  it 


JOIIN.     1204  TO  1215.  159 

had  formed  against  him.  His  quick  versatile  temper  saw  the 
momentary  gain  to  be  won.  On  the  15th  of  May,  1213  he 
knelt  before  the  legate  Pandulf,  surrendered  his  kingdom  to 
the 'Roman  See,  took  it  back  again  as  a  tributary  vassal, 
swore  fealty  and  did  liege  homage  to  the  Pope. 

In  after  times  men  believed  that  England  thrilled  at  the 
news  with  a  sense  of  national  shame  such  as  she  had  never 
felt  before.  "  He  has  become  the  Pope's  man/' 
the  whole  country  was  said  to  h'ave  murmured  :  f  ^  Battle 
"he  has  forfeited  the  very  name  of  king;  from 
a  free  man  he  has  degraded  himself  into  a  serf."  But  we 
see  little  trace  of  such  a  feeling  in  the  temporary  accounts  of 
the  time.  As  a  political  measure  indeed  the  success  of 
John's  submission  was  complete.  The  French  army  at  once 
broke  up  in  impotent  rage,  and  when  Philip  turned  against 
the  enemy  whom  John  had  raised  up  for  him  in  Flanders, 
five  hundred  English  ships  under  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  fell 
upon  the  fleet  which  accompanied  his  army  along  the  coast 
and  utterly  destroyed  it.  The  league  which  John  had  so 
long  matured  at  last  disclosed  itself.  The  king  himself 
landed  in  Poitou,  rallied  its  nobles  round  him,  crossed 
the  Loire  in  triumph,  and  won  back  Angers,  the  home  of 
his  race.  At  the  same  time  Otto,  reinforcing  his  German 
army  by  the  knighthood  of  Flanders  and  Boulogne  as 
well  as  by  a  body  of  English  troops,  threatened  France 
from  the  north.  For  the  moment  Philip  seemed  lost,  and 
yet  on  the  fortunes  of  Philip  hung  the  fortunes  of  English 
freedom.  But  in  this  crisis  of  her  fate  France  was  true  to 
herself  and  her  king ;  the  townsmen  marched  from  every 
borough  to  Philip's  rescue,  priests  led  their  flocks  to  battle 
with  the  Church  banners  flying  at  their  head.  The  two 
armies  met  near  the  bridge  of  Bonviues,  between  Lille  and 
Tournay,  and  from  the  first  the  day -went  against  the  allies. 
The  Flemish  were  the  first  to  fly  ;  then  the  Germans  in  the 
center  were  overwhelmed  by  the  numbers  of  the  French  ; 
last  of  all  the  English  on  the  right  were  broken  by  a  fierce 
onset  of  the  Bishop  of  Beauvais,  who  charged  mace  in  hand 
and  struck  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  to  the  ground.  The  news 
of  this  complete  overthrow  reached  John  in  the  midst  of  his 
triumphs  in  the  South,  and  scattered  his  hopes  to  the  winds. 
Hi-  \v;is  at  once  deserted  by  the  Poitevin  nobles,  and  a  hasty 


160  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

retreat  alone  enabled  him  to  return,  baffled  and  humiliated, 
to  his  island  kingdom. 

It  is  to  the  victory  of  Botivines  that  England  owes  her 
Great  Charter.     From    the   hour  of  his  submission  to  the 

Papacy,  John's  vengeance  on  the  barons  had  only 
Stephen     ^een  delayed  till  he  should  return  a  conqueror  from 

the  fields  of  France.  A  sense  of  their  danger  nerved 
the  baronage  to  resistance  ;  they  refused  to  follow  the  king 
on  his  foreign  campaign  till  the  excommunication  were 
removed,  and  when  it  was  removed  they  still  refused,  on  the 
plea  that  they  were  not  bound  to  serve  in  wars  without  the 
realm.  Furious  as  he  was  at  this  new  attitude  of  resistance, 
the  time  had  not  yet  come  for  vengeance,  and  John  sailed  for 
Poitou  with  the  dream  of  a  great  victory  which  should  lay 
Philip  and  the  barons  alike  at  his  feet.  He  returned  from 
his  defeat  to  find  the  nobles  no  longer  banded  together  in 
secret  conspiracies,  but  openly  united  in  a  definite  claim 
of  liberty  and  law.  The  leader  in  this  great  change  was 
the  new  Archbishop  whom  Innocent  had  set  on  the  throne  of 
Canterbury.  From  the  moment  of  his  landing  in  England, 
Stephen  Langton  had  assumed  the  constitutional  position  of 
the  Primate  as  champion  of  the  old  English  customs  and  law 
against  the  personal  despotism  of  the  kings.  As  Anselm  had 
withstood  William  the. Red,  as  Theobald  had  rescued  England 
from  the  lawlessness  of  Stephen,  so  Langtoii  prepared  to 
withstand  and  rescue  his  country  from  the  tyranny  of  John. 
He  had  already  forced  him  to  swear  to  observe  the  laws  of 
the  Confessor,  a  phrase  in  which  the  whole  of  the  national 
liberties  were  summed  up.  When  the  baronage  refused  to 
sail  to  Poitou,  he  compelled  the  king  to  deal  with  them  not 
by  arm  but  by  process  of  law.  Far  however  from  being 
satisfied  with  resistance  such  as  this  to  isolated  acts  of 
tyranny,  it  was  the  Archbishop's  aim  to  restore  on  a  formal 
basis  the  older  freedom  of  the  realm.  The  pledges  of 
Henry  the  First  had  long  been  forgotten  when  the  Justiciar, 
Geoffrey  Fitz-Peter,  brought  them  to  light  at  a  Council  held 
at  S.  Albans.  There  in  the  king's  name  the  Justiciar 
promised  good  government  for  the  time  to  come,  and  forbade 
all  royal  officers  to  practise  extortion  as  they  prized  life  and 
limb.  The  king's  peace  was  pledged  to  those  -who  had 
opposed  him  in  the  past  :  and  observance  of  the  laws  of 


THE   GREAT   CHARTER.      1215   TO   1217.  161 

Henry  the  First  was  enjoined  upon  all  within  the  realm. 
Langton  s;i\v  the  vast  importance  of  such  a  precedent.  In  a 
fresh  meeting  of  the  barons  at  S.  Paul's  he  produced  the 
Charter  of  Henry  the  First,  and  it  was  at  once  welcomed  as 
a  base  for  the  needed  reforms.  All  hope  however  kung  on 
the  fortunes  of  the  French  campaign ;  the  victory  at 
Bouvines  gave  strength  to  John's  opponents,  and  after  the 
king's  landing  the  barons  secretly  met  at  S.  Edmundsbury, 
and  swore  to  demand  from  him,  if  needful  by  force  of  arms, 
the  restoration  of  their  liberties  by  Charter  under  the  king's 
seal.  Early  in  January  in  the  year  1215  they  presented 
themselves  in  arms  before  the  king,  and  preferred  their 
claim.  The  few  months  that  followed  showed  John  the 
uselessness  of  resistance ;  nobles  and  Churchmen  were 
alike  arrayed  against  him,  and  the  commissioners  whom 
he  sent  to  plead  his  cause  at  shire-courts  brought  back  the 
news  that  no  man  would  help  him  against  the  Charter. 
At  Easter  the  barons  again  gathered  in  arms  at  Brackley, 
and  renewed  their  claim.  "Why  do  they  not  ask  for 
my  kingdom?"  cried  John  in  a  burst  of  passion;  but 
the  whole  country  rose  as  one  man  at  his  refusal.  London 
threw  open  her  gates  to  the  forces  of  the  barons,  now  or- 
ganized under  Robert  Fitz- Walter  as  "  Marshal  of  the  Army 
of  God  and  Holy  Clvurch."  The  example  of  the  capital  was 
followed  by  Exeter  and  Lincoln  ;  promises  of  aid  came  from 
Scotland  and  Wales  ;  the  northern  barons  marched  hastily  to 
join  their  comrades  in  London.  There  was  a  moment  when 
John  found  himself  with  seven  knights  at  his  back,  and 
before  him  a  nation  in  arms.  He  had  summoned  mercenaries 
and  appealed  to  his  liege  lord,  the  Pope  ;  but  summons  and 
appeal  were  alike  too  late.  Nursing  wrath  in  his  heart  the 
tyrant  bowed  to  necessity,  and  called  the  barons  to  a  con- 
ference at  Eunnymede. 


Section  III.— The  Great  Charter.    1215—1317. 

[Authorities.—  The  text  of  the  Charter  is  piven  by  Dr.  Stubbs,  with  valuable 
comments,  iu  his  "Select  Charters."    Mr.  Pearson  gives  a  useful  analysis  of  it.] 

An  island  in  the  Thames  between  Staines  and  Windsor 
had  been  chosen  as  the  place  of  conference  :  the  king  en- 
ii 


162  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

camped  on  one  bank,  while  the  barons  covered  the  marshy 
flat,  still  known  by  the  name  of  Kunnymede,  on  the  other. 
Their  delegates  met  in  the  island  between  them,  but  the  nego 
tiations  were  a  mere  cloak  to  cover  John's  purpose  of  uncon- 
ditional submission.  The  Great  Charter  was  discussed, 
agreed  to,  and  signed  in  a  single  day. 

One  copy  of  it  still  remains  in  the  British  Museum,  injured 
by  age  and  fire,  but  with  the  royal  seal  still  hanging  from  the 
brown,  shriveled  parchment.  It  is  impossible  to  gaze  without 
reverence  on  the  earliest  monument  of  English  freedom  which 
we  can  see  with  our  own  eyes  and  touch  with  our  own  hands, 
the  Great  Charter  to  which  from  age  to  age  patriots  have 
looked  back  as  the  basis  of  English  liberty.  But  in  itself 
the  Charter  was  no  novelty,  nor  did  it  claim  to  establish  any 
new  constitutional  principles.  The  Charter  of  Henry  the 
First  formed  the  basis  of  the  whole,  and  the  additions  to  it 
are  for  the  most  part  formal  recognitions  of  the  judicial  and 
administrative  changes  introduced  by  Henry  the  Second. 
But  the  vague  expressions  of  the  older  charter  were  now 
exchanged  for  precise  and  elaborate  provisions.  The  bonds 
of  unwritten  custom  which  the  older  grant  did  little  more 
than  recognize  had  proved  too  weak  to  hold  the  Angevins ; 
and  the  baronage  now  threw  them  aside  for  the  restraints  of 
written  law.  It  is  in  this  way  that  the  Great  Charter  marks 
the  transition  from  the  age  of  traditional  rights,  preserved  in 
the  nation's  memory  and  officially  declared  by  the  Primate, 
to  the  age  of  written  legislation,  of  Parliaments  and  Statutes, 
which  was  soon  to  come.  The  Church  had  shown  its  power 
of  self-defense  in  the  struggle  over  the  interdict,  and  the 
clause  which  recognized  its  rights  alone  retained  the  older 
and  general  form.  But  all  vagueness  ceases  when  the  Charter 
passes  on  to  deal  with  the  rights  of  Englishmen  at  large, 
their  right  to  justice,  to  security  of  person  and  property,  to 
good  government.  "  No  freeman,"  ran  the  memorable  article 
that  lies  at  the  base  of  our  whole  judicial  system,  "  shall  be 
seized  or  imprisoned,  or  dispossessed,  or  outlawed,  or  in  any 
way  brought  to  ruin  :  we  will  not  go  against  any  man  nor 
send  against  him,  save,  by  legal  judgment  of  his  peers  or  by 
the  law  of  the  land."  "To  no  man  will  we  sell,"  runs 
another,  "  or  deny,  or  delay,  right  or  justice."  The  great 
reforms  of  the  past  reigns  were  now  formally  recognized  ; 


THE   GREAT   CHARTER.      1215   TO   1217.  163 

judges  of  assize  were  to  hold  their  circuits  four  times  in  the 
year,  and  the  King's  Court  was  no  longer  to  follow  the  king 
in  his  wanderings  over  the  realm,  but  to  sit  in  a  fixed  place. 
But  the  denial  of  justice  under  John  was  a  small  danger 
compared  with  the  lawless  exactions  both  of  himself  and  his 
predecessor.  Richard  had  increased  the  amount  of  the 
scutage  which  Henry  the  Second  had  introduced,  and  ap- 
plied it  to  raise  funds  for  his  ransom.  He  had  restored  the 
Danegeld,  or  land-tax,  so  often  abolished,  under  the  new 
name  of  "earn  cage,"  had  seized  the  wool  of  the  Cistercians 
and  the  plate  of  the  churches,  and  rated  rnoveables  as  well  as 
land.  John  had  again  raised  the  rate  of  scutage,  and  im- 
posed aids,  fines,  and  ransoms  at  his  pleasure  without  counsel 
of  the  baronage.  The  Great  Charter  met  this  abuse  by  the 
provision  on  which  our  constitutional  system  rests.  With 
the  exception  of  the  three  customary  feudal  aids  which  still 
remained  to  the  crown,  "no  scutage  or  aid  shall  be  imposed 
in  our  realm  save  by  the  common  council  of  the  realm ; " 
and  to  this  Great  Council  it  was  provided  that  prelates  and 
the  greater  barons  should  be  summoned  by  special  writ,  and 
all  tenants  in  chief  through  the  sheriffs  and  bailiffs,  at  least 
forty  days  before.  The  provision  defined  what  had  probably 
been  the  common  usage  of  the  realm ;  but  the  definition 
turned  it  into  a  national  right,  a  right  so  momentous  that 
on  it  rests  our  whole  Parliamentary  life. 

The  rights  which  the  barons  claimed  for  themselves  they 
claimed  for  the  nation  at  large.  The  boon  of  free  and  un- 
bought  justice  was  a  boon  for  all,  but  a  special  ij^e  charter 
provision  protected  the  poor.  The  forfeiture  of  and  the 
the  freeman  on  conviction  of  felony  was  never  to  People, 
include  his  tenement,  or  that  of  the  merchant  his  wares,  or 
that  of  the  countryman  his  wain.  The  means  of  actual  live- 
lihood were  to  be  left  even  to  the  worst.  The  under-tenants 
or  farmers  were  protected  against  all  lawless  exactions  of 
their  lords  in  precisely  the  same  terms  as  these  were  protected 
against  the  lawless  exactions  of  the  crown.  The  towns  were 
secured  in  the  enjoyment  of  their  municipal  privileges,  their 
freedom  from  arbitrary  taxation,  their  rights  of  justice,  of 
common  deliberation,  of  regulation  of  trade.  "  Let  the  city 
of  London  have  all  its  old  liberties  and  its  free  customs,  as 
well  by  land  as  by  water.  Besides  this,  we  will  and  grant 


164  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

that  all  other  cities,  and  boroughs,  and  towns,  and  ports, 
have  all  their  liberties  and  free  customs."  The  influence  of 
the  trading  class  is  seen  in  two  other  enactments,  by  which 
freedom  of  journeying  and  trade  was  secured  to  foreign 
merchants,  and  an  uniformity  of  weights  and  measures  was 
ordered  to  be  enforced  throughout  the  realm.  There 
remained  only  one  question,  and  that  the  most  difficult  of 
all  ;  the  question  how  to  secure  this  order  which  the  Charter 
had  established  in  the  actual  government  of  the  realm.  Tiie 
immediate  abuses  were  easily  swept  away,  the  hostages 
restored  to  their  homes,  the  foreigners  banished  from  the 
country.  But  it  was  less  easy  to  provide  means  for  the  con- 
trol of  a  king  whom  no  man  could  trust,  and  a  council  cf 
twenty-five  barons  were  chosen  from  the  general  body  of  their 
order  to  enforce  on  John  the  observance  of  the  Charter,  with 
the  right  of  declaring  war  on  the  king  should  its  provisions 
be  infringed.  Finally,  the  Charter  was  published  through- 
out the  whole  country  and  sworn  to  at  every  hundred-mote 
and  town-mote  by  order  from  the  king. 

"  They  have  given  me  five-and-twenty  over-kings,"  cried 

John  in  a  burst  of  fury,  flinging  himself  on  the  floor  and 

gnawing  sticks  and  straw  in  his  impotent  rage. 

theChartn-  ^u^  ^ne  raSe  soon  Passe(l  into  the  subtle  policy  of 
which  he  was  a  master.  Some  days  after  he  left 
Windsor,  and  lingered  for  mouths  along  the  southern  shore, 
waiting  for  news  of  the  aid  he  had  solicited  from  Eome  and 
from  the  Continent.  It  was  not  without  definite  purpose 
that  he  had  become  the  vassal  of  Rome.  While  Innocent 
was  dreaming  of  a  vast  Christian  Empire  with  the  Pope  at  its 
head  to  enforce  justice  and  religion  on  his  under-kings, 
John  believed  that  the  Papal  protection  would  enable  him  to 
rule  as  tyrannically  as  he  Avould.  The  thunders  of  the  Papacy 
were  to  be  ever  at  hand  for  his  protection,  as  the  armies  of 
England  are  at  hand  to  protect  the  vileness  and  oppression 
of  a  Turkish  Sultan  or  a  Nizam  of  Hyderabad.  His  envoys 
were  already  at  Rome,  and  Innocent,  indignant  that  a  matter 
which  might  have  been  brought  before  his  court  of  appeal 
as  overlord  should  have  been  dealt  with  by  armed  revolt, 
annulled  the  Great  Charter  and  suspended  Stephen  Langton 
from  the  exercise  of  his  office  as  Primate.  Autumn  brought 
a  host  of  foreign  soldiers  from  oversea  to  the  king's  standard, 


TILE   GREAT   CHARTER.      1215   TO    1217.  165 

and  advancing  against  the  disorganized  forces  of  the  barons, 
John  starved  Rochester  into  submission  and  marched  ravag- 
ing through  the  midland  counties  to  the  north,  while  his 
mercenaries  spread  like  locusts  over  the  whole  face  of  the 
land.  From  Berwick  the  king  turned  back  triumphant  to 
coop  up  his  enemies  in  London,  while  fresh  Papal  excom- 
munications fell  on  the  barons  and  the  city.  But  the 
burghers  set  Innocent  at  defiance.  "  The  ordering  of 
secular  matters  appertaineth  not  to  the  Pope,"  they  said,  in 
words  that  seem  like  mutterings  of  the  coming  Lollardry  ; 
and  at  the  advice  of  Simon  Langton,  the  Archbishop's 
brother,  bells  swung  out  and  mass  was  celebrated  as  before. 
With  the  undisciplined  militia  of  the  country  and  the  towns, 
however,  success  was  impossible  against  the  trained  forces  of 
the  king,  and  despair  drove  the  barons  to  seek  aid  from 
France.  Philip  had  long  been  waiting  the  opportunity  for 
his  revenge  upon  John,  and  his  son  Lewis  at  once  accepted 
the  crown  in  spite  of  Innocent's  excommunications,  and 
landed  in  Kent  with  a  considerable  force.  As  the  barons 
had  foreseen,  the  French  mercenaries  who  constituted  John's 
host  refused  to  fight  against  the  French  sovereign.  The 
whole  aspect  of  affairs  was  suddenly  reversed.  Deserted  by 
the  bulk  of  his  troops,  the  king  was  forced  to  fall  rapidly 
back  on  the  Welsh  Marches,  while  his  rival  entered  London 
and  received  the  submission  of  the  larger  part  of  England. 
Only  Dover  held  out  obstinately  against  Lewis.  By  a  series 
of  rapid  marches  John  succeeded  in  distracting  the  plans  of 
the  barons  and  in  relieving  Lincoln  ;  then  after  a  short  stay 
at  Lynn  he  crossed  the  Wash  in  a  fresh  movement  to  the 
north.  In  crossing,  however,  his  army  was  surprised  by  the 
tide,  and  his  baggage  with  the  royal  treasures  washed  away. 
The  fever  which  seized  the  baffled  tyrant  in  the  abbey  of 
Swineshead  was  inflamed  by  a  gluttonous  debauch,  and  John 
entered  Newark  only  to  die.  His  death  changed 
the  whole  face  of  affairs,  for  his  son  Henry  was 
but  a  child  of  nine  years  old,  and  the  royal 
authority  passed  into  the  hands  of  one  who  stands  high 
among  English  patriots,  William  Marshal.  The  boy-king 
was  hardly  crowned  when  the  earl  and  the  Papal  Legate 
issued  in  his  name  the  very  Charter  against  which  his 
father  had  died  fighting  ;  only  the  clauses  which  regulated 


166  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

taxation  and  the  summoning  of  Parliament  were  as  yet  de- 
clared to  be  suspended.  The  nobles  soon  streamed  away  from 
the  French  camp  ;  for  national  jealousy  and  suspicions  of 
treason  told  heavily  against  Lewis,  while  the  pity  which  was 
excited  by  the  youth  and  helplessness  of  Henry  was  aided  by 
a  sense  of  injustice  in  burthening  the  child  with  the  iniquity 
of  his  father.  One  bold  stroke  of  William  Marshal  de- 
cided the  struggle.  A  joint  army  of  French  and  English 
barons  under  the  Count  of  Perclie  and  Robert  Fitz-Walter  was 
besieging  Lincoln,  when  the  earl,  rapidly  gathering  forces 
from  the  royal  castles,  marched  to  its  relief.  Cooped  up  in  the 
steep  narrow  streets,  and  attacked  at  once  by  the  Earl  and  the 
garrison,  the  barons  fled  in  hopeless  rout ;  the  Count  of 
Perche  fell  on  the  field  ;  Robert  Fitz-Walter  was  taken  pris- 
oner. Lewis,  who  was  investing  Dover,  retreated  to  London, 
and  called  for  aid  from  France.  But  a  more  terrible  defeat 
crushed  his  remaining  hopes.  A  small  English  fleet,  which 
had  set  sail  from  Dover  under  Hubert  de  Burgh,  fell  boldly 
on  the  reinforcements  which  were  crossing  under  the  escort 
of  Eustace  the  Monk,  a  well-known  freebooter  of  the  Chan- 
nel. The  fight  admirably  illustrates  the  naval  warfare  of  the 
time.  From  the  decks  of  the  English  vessels  bowmen  poured 
their  arrows  into  the  crowded  transports,  others  hurled  quick- 
lime into  their  enemies'  faces,  while  the  more  active  vessels 
crashed  with  their  armed  prows  into  the  sides  of  the  French 
ships.  The  skill  of  the  mariners  of  the  Cinque  Ports  decided 
the  day  against  the  larger  forces  of  their  opponents,  and  the 
fleet  of  Eustace  was  utterly  destroyed.  The  royal  army  at 
once  closed  in  upon  London,  but  resistance  was  really  at  an 
end.  By  the  treaty  of  Lambeth  Lewis  promised  to  withdraw 
from  England  on  payment  of  a  sum  which  he  claimed  as 
debt  ;  his  adherents  were  restored  to  their  possessions,  the 
liberties  of  London  and  other  towns  confirmed,  and  the  pris- 
oners on  either  side  set  at  liberty.  The  expulsion  of  the 
stranger  left  English  statesmen  free  to  take  up  again  the 
work  of  reform  ;  and  a  fresh  issue  of  the  Charter,  though  in 
its  modified  form,  proclaimed  clearly  the  temper  and  policy 
of  the  Earl  Marshal. 


THE   UNIVERSITIES.  167 


Section  IV.— The  Universities. 

[Authorities.--'For  the  Universities  we  have  the  collection  of  materials  edited 
by  Mr.  Anstey  under  the  name  of  "  Munimenta  Academica."  I  have  borrowed 
much  from  two  papers  of  my  own  in  "  Macmillan's  Magazine,"  on  "  The  Early 
History  of  Oxford."  For  Bacon,  see  his  "  Opera  Inedita,"  in  the  Rolls  Series,  with 
Mr.  Brewer's  Admirable  Introduction,  and  Dr.  Whewell's  estimate  of  him  in  his 
"  History  of  the  Inductive  Sciences."] 

From  the  turmoil  of  civil  politics  we  turn  to  the  more 
silent  but  hardly  less  important  revolution  from  which  we 
may  date  our  national  education.  It  is  in  the  reign  of  Henry 
the  Third  that  the  English  universities  begin  to  exercise  a 
definite  influence  on  the  intellectual  life  of  Englishmen.  Of 
the  early  history  of  Cambridge  we  know  little  or  nothing,  but 
enough  remains  to  enable  us  to  trace  the  early  steps  by  which 
Oxford  attained  to  its  intellectual  eminence.  The  establish- 
ment of  the  great  schools  which  bore  the  name  of  Universities 
was  everywhere  throughout  Europe  a  special  mark  of  the 
new  impulse  that  Christendom  had  gained  from  the  Crusades. 
A  new  fervor  of  study  sprang  up  in  the  West  from  its  con- 
tact with  the  more  cultured  East.  Travelers  like  Adelard 
of  Bath  brought  back  the  first  rudiments  of  physical  and 
mathematical  science  from  the  schools  of  Cordova  or  Bagdad. 
In  the  twelfth  century  a  classical  revival  restored  Caesar  and 
Virgil  to  the  list  of  monastic  studies,  and  left  its  stamp  on 
the  pedantic  style,  the  profuse  classical  quotations  of  writers 
like  William  of  Malmesbury  or  John  of  Salisbury.  The 
scholastic  philosophy  sprang  up  in  the  schools  of  Paris.  The 
Roman  law  was  revived  by  the  imperialist  doctors  of  Bologna. 
The  long  mental  inactivity  of  feudal  Europe  broke  up  like 
ice  before  a  summer's  sun.  Wandering  teachers  such  as 
Lanfranc  or  Anselm  crossed  sea  and  land  to  spread  the  new 
power  of  knowledge.  The  same  spirit  of  restlessness,  of  in- 
quiry, of  impatience  with  the  older  traditions  of  mankind, 
either  local  or  intellectual,  that  had  hurried  half  Christen- 
dom to  the  tomb  of  its  Lord,  crowded  the  roads  with  thou- 
sands of  young  scholars  hurrying  to  the  chosen  seats  where 
teachers  were  gathered  together.  A  new  power  had  sprung 
up  in  the  midst  of  a  world  as  yet  under  the  rule  of  sheer 
brute  force.  Poor  as  they  were,  sometimes  even  of  servile 
race,  the  wandering  scholars  who  lectured  in  every  cloister 


168  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

were  hailed  as  "  masters  "  by  the  crowds  at  their  feet. 
Abelard  was  a  foe  worthy  of  the  menaces  of  council,  of  the 
thunders  of  the  Church.  The  teaching  of  a  single  Lombard 
'was  of  note  enough  in  England  to  draw  down  the  prohibition 
of  a  king.  When  Vacarius,  probably  a  guest  in  the  court  of 
Archbishop  Theobald,  where  Beket  and  John  of  Salisbury 
were  already  busy  with  the  study  of  the  Civil  Law,  opened 
lectures  on  it  at  Oxford,  he  was  at  once  silenced  by  Stephen, 
who  was  then  at  war  with  the  Church,  and  jealous  of  the 
power  which  the  wreck  of  the  royal  authority  was  throwing 
into  Theobald's  hands. 

At  the  time  of  the  arrival  of  Vacarius  Oxford  stood  in  the 
first  rank  among  English  towns.     Its    town   church  of   S. 

Martin  rose  from  the  midst   of  a  huddled  group 
Oxford,      of  houses,  girt  in    with  massive   walls,  that  lay 

along  the  dry  upper  ground  of  a  low  peninsula 
between  the  streams  of  Cherwell  and  the  uppm-  Thames. 
The  ground  fell  gently  on  either  side,  eastward  and  west- 
ward, to  these  rivers,  while  on  the  south  a  sharper  descent 
led  down  across  swampy  meadows  to  the  city  bridge.  Around 
lay  a  wild  forest  country,  the  moors  of  Cowleyand  Bullingdon 
fringing  the  course  of  Thames,  the  great  woods  of  Shotover 
and  Bagley  closing  the  horizon  to  the  south  and  east.  Though 
the  two  huge  towers  of  its  Norman  castle  marked  the  strategic 
importance  of  Oxford  as  commanding  the  river  valley  along 
which  the  commerce  of  Southern  England  mainly  flowed, 
its  walls  formed,  perhaps,  the  least  element  in  its  military 
strength,  for  on  every  side  but  the  north  the  town  was 
guarded  by  the  swampy  meadows  along  Cherwell,  or  by  the 
intricate  network  of  streams  into  which  the  Thames  breaks 
among  the  meadows  of  Osney.  From  the  midst  of  these 
meadows  rose  a  mitered  abbey  of  Austin  Canons,  which,  with 
the  older  priory  of  S.  Frideswide,  gave  the  town  some  eccle- 
siastical dignity.  The  residence  of  the  Norman  house  of  the 
D'Oillies  within  its  castle,  the  frequent  visits  of  English  kings 
to  a  palace  without  its  walls,  the  presence  again  and  again  of 
important  councils,  marked  its  political  weight  within  the 
realm.  The  settlement  of  one  of  the  wealthiest  among  the 
English  Jewries  in  the  very  heart  of  the  town  indicated,  while 
it  promoted,  the  activity  of  its  trade.  No  place  better  illus- 
trates the  transformation  of  the  land  in  the  hands  of  its 


THE   UNIVEKSITIES.  169 

Norman  masters,  the  sudden  outburst  of  industrial  effort, 
the  sudden  expansion  of  commerce  and  accumulation  of 
wealth  which  followed  the  Conquest.  To  the  west  of  the 
town  rose  one  of  the  stateliest  of  English  castles,  and  in  the 
meadows  beneath  the  hardly  less  stately  abbey  of  Osney.  In 
the  fields  to  the  north  the  last  of  the  Norman  kings  raised 
his  palace  of  Beaumont.  The  canons  of  S.  Frideswide  reared 
the  church  which  still  exists  as  the  diocesan  cathedral,  while 
the  piety  of  the  Norman  Castellans  rebuilt  almost  all  the 
parish  churches  of  the  city,  and  founded  within  their  new 
castle  walls  the  church  of  the  Canons  of  S.  George.  We  know 
nothing  of  the  causes  which  drew  students  and  teachers 
within  the  walls  of  Oxford.  It  is  possible  that  here  as  else- 
where a  new  teacher  had  quickened  older  educational  founda- 
tions, and  that  the  cloisters  of  Osney  and  S.  Frideswide  al- 
ready possessed  schools  which  burst  into  a  larger  life  under 
the  impulse  of  Vacarius.  As  yet,  however,  the  fortunes  of 
the  University  were  obscured  by  the  glories  of  Paris.  Eng- 
lish scholars  gathered  in  thousands  round  the  chairs  of 
William  of  Champeaux  or  Abelard.  The  English  took  their 
place  as  one  of  the  "  nations  "  of  the  French  University. 
John  of  Salisbury  became  famous  as  one  of  the  Parisian 
teachers.  Beket  wandered  to  Paris  from  his  school  at  Merton. 
But  through  the  peaceful  reign  of  Henry  the  Second  Oxford 
was  quietly  increasing  in  numbers  and  repute.  Forty  years 
after  the  visit  of  Vacarius  its  educational  position  was  fully 
established.  When  Gerald  of  Wales  read  his  amusing  Topog- 
raphy of  Ireland  to  its  students,  the  most  learned  and  famous 
of  the  English  clergy  were,  he  tells  us,  to  be  found  within  its 
walls.  At  the  opening  of  the  thirteenth  century  Oxford  was 
without  a  rival  in  its  own  country,  while  in  European  cele- 
brity it  took  rank  with  the  greatest  schools  of  the  Western 
world.  But  to  realize  this  Oxford  of  the  past  we  must  dis- 
miss from  our  minds  all  recollections  of  the  Oxford  of  the 
present.  In  the  outer  aspect  of  the  new  University  there  was 
nothing  of  the  pomp  that  overawes  the  freshman  as  he  first 
paces  the  "  High,"  or  looks  down  from  the  gallery  of  S. 
Mary's.  In  the  stead  of  long  fronts  of  venerable  colleges,  of 
stately  walks  beneath  immemorial  elms,  history  plunges  us 
into  the  mean  and  filthy  lanes  of  a  medieval  town.  Thou- 
sands of  boys,  huddled  in  bare  lodging-houses,  clustering 


170  HISTORY    OF    THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

round  teachers  as  poor  as  themselves  in  church  porch  and 
house  porch,  drinking,  quarreling,  dicing,  begging  at  the 
corners  of  the  streets,  take  the  place  of  the  brightly-colored 
train  of  doctors  and  Heads.  Mayor  and  Chancellor  struggled 
in  vain  to  enforce  order  or  peace  on  this  seething  mass  of 
turbulent  life.  The  retainers  who  followed  their  young  lords 
to  the  University  fought  out  the  feuds  of  their  houses  in  the 
streets.  Scholars  from  Kent  and  scholars  from  Scotland 
waged  the  bitter  struggle  of  North  and  South.  At  nightfall 
roysterer  and  reveler  roamed  with  torches  through  the  narrow 
lanes,  defying  bailiffs,  and  cutting  down  burghers  at  their 
doors.  Now  a  mob  of  clerks  plunged  into  the  Jewry,  and 
wiped  off  the  memory  of  bills  and  bonds  by  sacking  a  Hebrew 
house  or  two.  Now  a  tavern  row  between  scholar  and  towns- 
man widened  into  a  general  broil,  and  the  academical  bell  of 
S.  Mary's  vied  with  the  town  bell  of  S.  Martin's  in  clanging 
to  arms.  Every  phase  of  ecclesiastical  controversy  or  political 
strife  was  preluded  by  some  fierce  outbreak  in  this  turbulent, 
surging  rnob.  When  England  growled  at  the  exactions  of 
the  Papacy,  the  students  besieged  a  legate  in  the  abbot's 
house  at  Osney.  A  murderous  town  and  gown  row  preceded 
the  opening  of  the  Barons'  War.  "  When  Oxford  draws 
knife,"  ran  the  old  rime,  "  England's  soon  at  strife." 

But  the  turbulence  and  stir  was  a  stir  and  turbulence  of 
life.  A  keen  thirst  for  knowledge,  a  passionate  poetry  of 
devotion,  gathered  thousands  round  the  poorest 
irh  scn°lar>  an(i  welcomed  the  barefoot  friar.  Ed- 
mund Rich — Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  saint 
in  later  days — came  to  Oxford,  a  boy  of  twelve  years  old, 
from  the  little  lane  at  Abingdon  that  still  bears  his  name. 
He  found  his  school  in  an  inn  that  belonged  to  the  abbey  of 
Eynsham,  where  his  father  had  taken  refuge  from  the  world. 
His  mother  was  a  pious  woman  of  the  day,  too  poor  to  give 
her  boy  much  outfit  besides  the  hair  shirt  that  he  promised 
to  wear  every  Wednesday  ;  but  Edmund  was  no  poorer  than 
his  neighbors.  He  plunged  at  once  into  the  nobler  life  of 
the  place,  its  ardor  for  knowledge,  its  mystical  piety. 
"  Secretly,"  perhaps  at  eventide  when  the  shadows  were 
gathering  in  the  church  of  S.  Mary's,  and  the  crowd  of 
teachers  and  students  had  left  its  aisles,  the  boy  stood  before 
an  image  of  the  Virgin,  and  placing  a  ring  of  gold  upon  its 


THE   UNIVERSITIES.  171 

finger  took  Mary  for  his  bride.  Years  of  study,  broken  by 
a  fever  that  raged  among  the  crowded,  noisome  streets, 
brought  the  time  for  completing  his  education  at  Paris  ;  and 
Edmund,  hand  in  hand  with  a  brother  Robert  of  his,  begged 
his  way,  as  poor  scholars  were  wont,  to  the  great  school  of 
Western  Christendom.  Here  a  damsel,  heedless  of  his  ton- 
sure, wooed  him  so  pertinaciously  that  Edmund  consented  at 
last  to  an  assignation  ;  but  when  he  appeared  it  was  in  com- 
pany of  grave  academical  officials,  who,  as  the  maiden  de- 
clared in  the  hour  of  penitence  which  followed,  "straight- 
way whipped  the  offending  Eve  out  of  her/'  Still  true  to 
his  Virgin  bridal,  Edmund,  on  his  return  from  Paris,  became 
the  most  popular  of  Oxford  teachers.  It  is  to  him  that  Ox- 
ford owes  her  first  introduction  to  the  Logic  of  Aristotle. 
We  see  him  in  the  little  room  which  he  hired,  with  the  Vir- 
gin's chapel  hard  by,  his  gray  gown  reaching  to  his  feet, 
ascetic  in  his  devotion,  falling  asleep  in  lecture  time  after  a 
sleepless  night  of  prayer,  with  a  grace  and  cheerfulness  of 
manner  which  told  of  his  French  training,  and  a  chivalrous 
love  of  knowledge  that  let  his  pupils  pay  what  they  would. 
"  Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust,"  the  young  tutor  would  say, 
a  touch  of  scholarly  pride  perhaps  mingling  with  his  con- 
tempt of  worldly  things,  as  he  threw  down  the  fee  on  the 
dusty  window-ledge,  whence  a  thievish  student  would  some- 
times run  off  with  it.  But  even  knowledge  brought  its 
troubles  ;  the  Old  Testament,  which  with  a  copy  of  the  De- 
cretals long  formed  his  sole  library,  frowned  down  upon  a 
love  of  secular  learning  from  which  Edmund  found  it  hard 
to  wean  himself.  At  last,  in  some  hour  of  dream,  the  form 
of  his  dead  mother  floated  into  the  room  where  the  teacher 
stood  among  his  mathematical  diagrams.  "  What  are  these  ?  " 
she  seemed  to  say  ;  and  seizing  Edmund's  right  hand,  she 
drew  on  the  palm  three  circles  interlaced,  each  of  which  bore 
the  name  of  one  of  the  Persons  of  the  Christian  Trinity. 
"  Be  these,"  she  cried,  as  her  figure  faded  away,  "  thy  dia- 
grams henceforth,  my  son." 

The  story  admirably  illustrates  the  real  character  of  the 
new  training,  and  the  latent  opposition  between  the  spirit  of 
the   Universities   and   the  spirit  of  the  Church,     j^  r/ni- 
The  feudal  and   ecclesiastical   order   of   the  old  versities  and 
medieval  world  were  both  alike  threatened  by  the  Feudalism. 


l'J2  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

power  that  had  so  strangely  sprung  up  in  the  midst  of  them. 
Feudalism  rested  on  local  isolation,  on  the  severance  of  king- 
dom from  kingdom  and  barony  from  barony,  on  .the  distinc- 
tion of  blood  and  race,  on  the  supremacy  of  material  or  brute 
force,  on  an  allegiance  determined  by  accidents  of  place  and 
social  position.  The  University,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a 
protest  against  the  isolation  of  man  from  man.  The  smallest 
school  was  European  and  not  local.  Not  merely  every  prov- 
ince of  France,  but  every  people  of  Christendom,  had  its 
place  among  the  "  nations  "  of  Paris  or  Padua.  A  common, 
language,  the  Latin  tongue,  superseded  within  academical 
bounds  the  warring  tongues  of  Europe.  A  common  intel- 
lectual kinship  and  rivalry  took  the  place  of  the  petty  strifes 
which  parted  province  from  province  or  realm  from  realm. 
What  the  Church  and  Empire  had  both  aimed  at  and  both 
failed  in,  the  knitting  of  Christian  nations  together  into  a 
vast  commonwealth,  the  Universities  for  a  time  actually  did. 
Dante  felt  himself  as  little  a  stranger  in  the  "  Latin  "'quarter 
around  Mont  Ste.  Genevieve  as  under  the  arches  of  Bologna. 
Wandering  Oxford  scholars  carried  the  writings  of  Wyclif  to 
the  libraries  of  Prague.  In  England  the  work  of  provincial 
fusion  was  less  difficult  or  important  than  elsewhere,  but 
even  in  England  work  had  to  be  done.  The  feuds  of  North- 
erner and  Southerner  which  so  long  disturbed  the  discipline 
of  Oxford  witnessed  at  any  rate  to  the  fact  that  Northerner 
and  Southerner  had  at  last  been  brought  face  to  face  in  its 
streets.  And  here  as  elsewhere  the  spirit  of  national  isola- 
tion was  held  in  check  by  the  larger  comprehensiveness  of 
the  University.  After  the  dissensions  that  threatened  the 
prosperity  of  Paris  in  the  thirteenth  century,  Norman  and 
Gascon  mingled  with  Englishmen  in  Oxford  lecture-halls. 
At  a  later  time  the  rebellion  of  Owen  Glyndwr  found  hun- 
dreds of  Welshmen  gathered  round  its  teachers.  And  with- 
in this  strangely  mingled  mass,  society  and  government  rested 
on  a  purely  democratic  basis.  Among  Oxford  scholars  the 
son  of  the  noble  stood  on  precisely  the  same  footing  with  the 
poorest  mendicant.  Wealth,  physical  strength,  skill  in  arms, 
pride  of  ancestry  and  blood,  the  very  grounds  on  which  feudal 
society  rested,  went  for  nothing  in  the  lecture-room.  The 
University  was  a  state  absolutely  self-governed,  and  whose 
citizens  were  admitted  by  a  purely  intellectual  franchise. 


THE    UNIVERSITIES.  178 

Knowledge  made  the  "  master."  To  know  more  than  one's 
fellows  was  a  man's  sole  claim  to  be  a  "  ruler"  in  the  schools  : 
and  within  this  intellectual  aristocracy  all  were  equal.  When 
the  free  commonwealth  of  the  masters  gathered  in  the  aisles 
of  S.  Mary's  all  had  an  equal  right  to  counsel,  all  had  an 
equal  vote  in  the  final  decision.  Treasury  and  library  were 
at  their  complete  disposal.  It  was  their  voice  that  named 
every  officer,  that  proposed  and  sanctioned  every  statute. 
Even  the  Chancellor,  their  head,  who  had  at  first  been  an 
officer  of  the  Bishop,  became  an  elected  officer  of  their  own. 
If  the  democratic  spirit  of  the  Universities  threatened 
feudalism,  their  spirit  of  intellectual  inquiry  threatened  the 
Church.  To  all  outer  seeming  they  were  purely  TheUni- 
ecclesiastical  bodies.  The  wide  extension  which  versities  and 
medieval  usage  gave  to  the  word  "  orders "  the  Clmrcl1- 
gathered  the  whole  educated  world  within  the  pale  of  the 
clergy.  Whatever  might  be  their  age  or  proficiency,  scholar 
and  teacher  were  alike  clerks,  free  from  lay  responsibilities 
or  the  control  of  civil  tribunals,  and  amenable  only  to  the 
rule  of  the  Bishop  and  the  sentence  of  his  spiritual  courts. 
This  ecclesiastical  character  of  the  University  appeared  in 
that  of  its  head.  The  Chancellor,  as  we  have  seen,  was  at 
first  no  officer  of  the  University,  but  of  the  ecclesiastical 
body  under  whose  shadow  it  had  sprung  into  life.  At  Ox- 
ford he  was  simply  the  local  officer  of  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln, 
within  whose  immense  diocese  the  University  was  then  situ- 
ated. But  this  identification  in  outer  form  with  the  Church 
only  rendered  more  conspicuous  the  difference  of  its  spirit. 
The  sudden  expansion  of  the  field  of  education  diminished 
the  importance  of  those  purely  ecclesiastical  and  theological 
studies  which  had  hitherto  absorbed  the  whole  intellectual 
energies  of  mankind.  The  revival  of  classical  literature,  the 
rediscovery  as  it  were  of  an  older  and  a  greater  world,  the 
contact  with  a  larger,  freer  life,  whether  in  mind,  in  society, 
or  in  politics,  introduced  a  spirit  of  skepticism,  of  doubt,  of 
denial  into  the  realms  of  unquestioning  belief.  Abelard 
claimed  for  reason  the  supremacy  over  faith.  Florentine 
poets  discussed  with  a  smile  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 
Even  to  Dante,  while  he  censures  these,  Virgil  is  as  sacred 
as  Jeremiah.  The  imperial  ruler  in  whom  the  new  culture 
took  its  most  notable  form,  Frederic  the  Second,  the 


374  HISTORY   OP   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

"  World's  "Wonder  "  of  his  time,  was  regarded  by  half  Europe 
as  no  better  than  an  infidel.  A  faint  revival  of  physical 
science,  so  long  crushed  as  magic  by  the  dominant  ecclesias- 
ticism,  brought  Christians  into  perilous  contact  with  the 
Moslem  and  the  Jew.  The  books  of  the  Rabbis  were  no 
longer  a  mere  accursed  thing  to  Roger  Bacon.  The  scholars 
of  Cordova  were  no  mere  Paynim  swine  to  Abelard  of  Bath. 
How  slowly  indeed  and  against  what  obstacles  science  won 
its  way  we  know  from  the  witness  of  Roger  Bacon.  f<  Slowly," 
he  tells  us,  "has  any  portion  of  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle 
come  into  use  among  the  Latins.  His  Natural  Philosophy 
and  his  Metaphysics,  with  the  Commentaries  of  Averroes  and 
others,  were  translated  in  my  time,  and  interdicted  at  Paris 
up  to  the  year  of  grace  1237  because  of  their  assertion  of  the 
eternity  of  the  world  and  of  time,  and  because  of  the  book 
of  the  divinations  by  dreams  (which  is  the  third  book,  De 
Somniis  et  Vigiliis),  and  because  of  many  passages  erroneously 
translated.  Even  his  Logic  was  slowly  received  and  lectured 
on.  For  St.  Edmund,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was 
the  first  in  my  time  who  read  the  elements  at  Oxford.  And 
I  have  seen  Master  Hugo,  who  first  read  the  book  of  Posterior 
Analytics,  and  I  have  seen  his  writing.  So  there  were  but 
few,  considering  the  multitude  of  the  Latins,  who  were  of 
any  account  in  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle  ;  nay,  very  few 
indeed,  and  scarcely  any  up  to  this  year  of  grace  1292." 

We  shall  see  in  a  later  page  how  fiercely  the  Church  fought 
against  this  tide  of  opposition,  and  how  it  won  back  the  al- 
legiance of  the  Universities  through  the  begging 
Roger  Friars.  But  it  was  in  the  ranks  of  the  Friars 
themselves  that  the  intellectual  progress  of  the 
Universities  found  its  highest  representative.  The  life  of 
Roger  Bacon  almost  covers  the  thirteenth  century  ;  he  was 
the  child  of  royalist  parents,  who  had  been  driven  into  exile 
and  reduced  to  poverty  by  the  civil  wars.  From  Oxford, 
where  he  studied  under  Edmund  of  Abingdon,  to  whom  he 
owed  his  introduction  to  the  works  of  Aristotle,  he  passed 
to  the  University  of  Paris,  where  his  whole  heritage  was 
spent  in  costly  studies  and  experiments.  "From  my  youth 
up/'  he  writes,  "  I  have  labored  at  the  sciences  and  tongues. 
I  have  sought  the  friendship  of  all  men  among  the  Latins 
who  had  any  reputation  for  knowledge.  I  have  caused 


THE   UNJVHUSITJES.  17") 

youths  to  be  instructed  in  languages,  geometry,  arithmetic, 
the  construction  of  tables  and  instruments,  and  many  need- 
ful things  besides."  The'  difficulties  in  the  way  of  such 
studies  as  he  had  resolved  to  pursue  were  immense.  He  was 
without  instruments  or  means  of  experiment.  "  Without 
mathematical  instruments  no  science  can  be  mastered,"  he 
complains  afterwards,  "and  these  instruments  are  not  to  be 
found  among  the  Latins, 'nor  could  they  be  made  for  two  or 
three  hundred  pounds.  Besides,  better  tables  are  indispens- 
ably necessary,  tables  on  which  the  motions  of  the  heavens 
are  certified  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  world 
without  daily  labor,  but  these  tables  are  worth  a  king's  ran- 
som, and  could  not  be  made  without  a  vast  expense.  I  have 
often  attempted  the  composition  of  such  tables,  but  could 
not  finish  them  through  failure  of  means  and  the  folly  of 
those  whom  I  had  to  employ."  Books  were  difficult  and 
sometimes  even  impossible  to  procure.  "  The  philosophical 
works  of  Aristotle,  of  Avicenna,  of  Seneca,  of  Cicero,  and 
other  ancients  cannot  be  had  without  great  cost ;  their  prin- 
cipal works  have  not  been  translated  into  Latin,  and  copies 
of  others  ai-e  not  to  be  found  in  ordinary  libraries  or  else- 
where. The  admirable  books  of  Cicero  de  Kepublica  are  not 
to  be  found  anywhere,  so  far  as  I  can  hear,  though  I  have 
made  anxious  inquiry  for  them  in  different  parts  of  the  world, 
and  by  various  messengers.  I  could  never  find  the  works  of 
Seneca,  though  I  made  diligent  search  for  them  during 
.twenty  years  and  more.  And  so  it  is  with  many  more  most 
useful  books  connected  with  the  science  of  morals."  It  is 
only  words  like  these  of  his  own  that  bring  home  to  us  the 
keen  thirst  for  knowledge,  the  patience,  the  energy  of  Roger 
Bacon.  He  returned  as  a  teacher  to  Oxford,  and  a  touch- 
ing record  of  his  devotion  to  those  whom  he  taught  remains 
in  the  story  of  John  of  London,  a  boy  of  fifteen,  whose  ability 
raised  him  above  the  general  level  of  his  pupils.  "  When  he 
came  to  me  as  a  poor  boy,"  says  Bacon,  in  recommending 
him  to  the  Pope,  "  I  caused  him  to  be  nurtured  and  in- 
structed for  the  love  of  God,  especially  since  for  aptitude 
and  innocence  I  have  never  found  so  towardly  a  youth.  Five 
or  six  years  ago  I  caused  him  to  be  taught  in  languages, 
mathematics,  and  optics,  and  I  have  gratuitously  instructed 
him  with  my  own  lips  since  the  time  that  I  received  your 


176  H1STOKY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

mandate.  There  is  no  one  at  Paris  who  knows  so  much  of 
the  root  of  philosophy,  though  he  has  not  produced  the 
branches,  flowers,  and  fruit  because  of  his  youth,  and  be- 
cause he  has  had  no  experience  in  teaching.  Bat  he  has  the 
means  of  surpassing  all  the  Latins  if  he  live  to  grow  old  and 
goes  on  as  he  has  begun." 

The  pride  with  which  he  refers  to  his  system  of  instruc- 
tion was  justified  by  the  wide  extension  which  he  gave  to 
scientific  teaching  in  Oxford.  It  is  probably  of  himself  that 
he  speaks  when  he  tells  us  that  "  the  science  of  optics  has  not 
hitherto  been  lectured  on  at  Paris  or  elsewhere  among  the 
Latins,  save  twice  at  Oxford."  It  was  a  science  on  which  he 
had  labored  for  ten  years.  But  his  teaching  seems  to  have 
fallen  on  a  barren  soil.  From  the  moment  when  the  friars 
settled  in  the  Universities  scholasticism  absorbed  the  whole 
mental  energy  of  the  student  world.  The  temper  of  the  age 
was  against  scientific  or  philosophical  studies.  The  older 
enthusiasm  for  knowledge  was  dying  down  ;  the  study  of  law 
was  the  one  source  of  promotion,  whether  in  Church  or  State  ; 
philosophy  was  discredited,  literature  in  its  purer  forms 
became  almost  extinct.  After  forty  years  of  incessant  study, 
Bacon  found  himself  in  his  own  words  "  unheard,  forgotten 
buried. v  He  seems  at  one  time  to  have  been  wealthy,  but 
his  wealth  was  gone.  "  During  the  twenty  years  that  I  have 
specially  labored  in  the  attainment  of  wisdom,  abandoning 
the  path  of  common  men,  I  have  spent  on  these  pursuits 
more  than  two  thousand  pounds  on  account  of  the  cost  of 
books,  experiments,  instruments,  tables,  the  acquisition  of 
languages,  and  the  like.  Add  to  all  this  the  sacrifices  I  have 
made  to  procure  the  friendship  of  the  wise,  and  to  obtain 
well-instructed  assistants."  Euined  and  baffled  in  his  hopes, 
Bacon  listened  to  the  counsels  of  his  friend  Grosseteste  and 
renounced  the  world.  He  became  a  friar  of  the  order  of  S. 
Francis,  an  order  where  books  and  study  were  looked  upon 
as  hindrance  to  the  work  which  it  had  specially  undertaken, 
that  of  preaching  among  the  masses  of  the  poor.  He  had 
written  hardly  anything.  So  far  was  he  from  attempting  to 
write,  that  his  new  superiors  had  prohibited  him  from  pub- 
lishing anything  under  pain  of  forfeiture  of  the  book  and 
penance  of  bread  and  water.  But  we  can  see  the  craving  of 
Ms  mind,  the  passionate  instinct  of  creation  which  marks  the 


THE   UNIVERSITIES.  177 

man  of  genius,  in  the  joy  with  which  he  seized  the  strange 
opportunity  which  suddenly  opened  before  him.  "  Some 
few  chapters  on  different  subjects,  written  at  the  entreaty  of 
friends,"  seem  to  have  got  abroad,  and  were  brought  by  one 
of  his  chaplains  undor  the  notice  of  Clement  the  Fourth. 
The  Pope  at  once  invited  him  to  write.  Again  difficulties 
stood  in  his  way.  Materials,  transcription,  and  other  ex- 
penses for  such  Ta  work  as  he  projected  would  cost  at  least 
£60,  and  the  Pope  had  not  sent  a  penny.  He  begged  help 
from  his  family,  but  they  were  ruined  like  himself.  No  one 
would  lend  to  a  mendicant  friar,  and  when  his  friends  raised 
the  money  it  was  by  pawning  their  goods  in  the  hope  of  re- 
payment from  .Clement.  Nor  was  this  all  ;  the  work  itself, 
abstruse  and  scientific  as  was  its  subject,  had  to  be  treated 
in  a  clear  and  popular  form  to  gain  the  Papal  ear.  But  dif- 
ficulties which  would  have  crushed  another  man  only  roused 
Roger  Bacon  to  an  almost  superhuman  energy.  In  little 
more  than  a  year  the  work  was  done.  The  "greater  work/' 
itself  in  modern  form  a  closely  printed  folio,  with  its  succes- 
sive summaries  and  appendices  in  the  "lesser"  and  the 
"third  "  works  (which  make  a  good  octavo  more)  were  pro- 
duced and  forwarded  to  the  Pope  within  fifteen  months. 

No  trace  of  this  fiery  haste  remains  in  the  book  itself. 
The  "  Opus  Majus"  is  alike  wonderful  in  plan  and  detail. 
Bacon's  main  plan,  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Whewell, 
is  "  to  urge  the  necessity  of  a  reform  in  the  mode  j 
of  philosophizing,  to  set  forth  the  reasons  why 
knowledge  had  not  made  a  greater  progress,  to  draw  back 
attention  to  sources  of  knowledge  which  had  been  unwisely 
neglected,  to  discover  other  sources  which  were  yet  wholly 
unknown,  and  to  animate  men  to  the  undertaking  by  a  pros- 
pect of  the  vast  advantages  which  it  offered."  The  devel- 
opment of  his  scheme  is  on  the  largest  scale  ;  he  gathers 
together  the  whole  knowledge  of  his  time  on  every  branch 
of  science  which  it  possessed,  and  as  he  passes  them  in  review 
he  suggests  improvements  in  nearly  all.  His  labors,  both 
here  and  in  his  after  works,  in  the  field  of  grammar  and 
philology,  his  perseverance  in  insisting  on  the  necessity  of 
correct  texts,  of  an  accurate  knowledge  of  languages,  of  an 
exact  interpretation,  are  hardly  less  remarkable  than  his 
scientific  investigations.  But  from  grammar  he  passes  to 
12 


178  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

mathematics,  from  mathematics  to  experimental  philosophy. 
Under  the  name  of  mathematics  was  included  all  the  physi- 
cal science  of  the  time.  ' '  The  neglect  of  it  for  nearly  thirty 
or  forty  years/'  pleads  Bacon  passionately,  "  hath  nearly 
destroyed  the  entire  studies  of  Latin  Christendom.  For  he 
who  knows  not  mathematics  cannot  know  any  other  sciences  ; 
and  what  is  more,  he  cannot  discover  his  own  ignorance  or  find 
its  proper  remedies/'  Geography,  chronology,  arithmetic, 
music,  are  brought  into  something  of  scientific  form,  and 
the  same  rapid  examination  is  devoted  to  the  question  of 
climate,  to  hydrography,  geography,  and  astrology.  The 
subject  of  optics,  his  own  especial  study,  is  treated  with 
greater  fulness  ;  he  enters  into  the  question  of  the  anatomy 
of  the  eye,  besides  discussing  the. problems  which  lie  more 
strictly  within  the  province  of  optical  science.  In  a  word, 
the  "  Greater  Work/'  to  borrow  the  phrase  of  Dr.  Whewell, 
is  "at  once  the  Encyclopedia  and  the  Novum  Organum  of 
the  thirteenth  century."  The  whole  of  the  after  works  of 
Eoger  Bacon — and  treatise  after  treatise  has  of  late  been  dis- 
entombed from  our  libraries — are  but  developments  in  detail 
of  the  magnificent  conception  he  had  laid  before  Clement. 
Such  a  work  was  its  own  great  reward.  From  the  world  around 
Koger  Bacon  could  look  for  and  found  small  recognition.  No 
word  of  acknowledgment  seems  to  have  reached  its  author 
from  the  Pope.  If  we  may  credit  a  more  recent  story,  his 
writings  only  gained  him  a  prison  from  his  order.  "  Un- 
heard, forgotten,  buried/'  the  old  man  died  as  he  had  lived, 
and  it  has  been  reserved  for  later  ages  to  roll  away  the  ob- 
scurity that  had  gathered  round  his  memory,  and  to  place  first 
in  the  great  roll  of  modern  science  the  name  of  Koger  Bacon. 

Section  V.— Henry  the  Third.    1216 — 1257. 

[Authorities. — The  two  great  authorities  for  this  period  are  the  historiographers 
of  St.  Albans,  Roger  of  Wendover,  whose  work  ends  in  1235,  and  his  editor  and 
continuator  Matthew  Paris.  The  first  is  full  but  inaccurate,  and  with  strong 
royal  and  ecclesiastical  sympathies  :  of  the  character  of  Matthew,  I  have  spoken 
at  the  close  of  the  present  section.  The  Chronicles  of  Dunstable,  Waverley  and 
Burton  (published  in  Mr.  Luard's  "  Annales  Monastic! ")  supply  many  details. 
The  '•  Royal  Letters,"  edited  by  Dr.  Shirley,  with  an  admirable  preface,  are,  like 
the  Patent  and  Close  Rolls,  of  the  highest  value.  For  opposition  to  Rome,  see 
'•  Qrosseteste's  Letters,"  edited  by  Mr.  Luard.] 

The  death  of  the  Earl  Marshal  in  1219  left  the  direction  of 
affairs  in  the  hands  of  a  new  legate,  Pandulf,  of  Stephen 


HENRY   THE   THIRD.      1216   TO   1257.  179 

Langton  who  had  just  returned  forgiven  from  Rome,  and  of 
the  Justiciar,  Hubert  de  Burgh.  It  was  an  age  of  transition, 
and  the  temper  of  the  Justiciar  was  eminently 
transitional.  Bred  in  the  School  of  Henry  the 
Second,  he  had  little  sympathy  with  national 
freedom  ;  his  conception  of  good  government,  like  that  of 
his  master,  lay  in  a  wise  personal  administration,  in  the 
preservation  of  order  and  law.  But  he  combined  with  this 
a  thoroughly  English  desire  for  national  independence,  a 
hatred  of  foreigners,  and  a  reluctance  to.  waste  English 
blood  and  treasure  in  Continental  struggles.  Able  as  he 
proved  himself,  his  task  was  one  of  no  common  difficulty. 
He  was  hampered  by  the  constant  interference  of  Rome.  A 
Papal  legate  resided  at  the  English  court,  and  claimed  a 
share  in  the  administration  of  the  realm  as  the  representative 
of  its  over-lord,  and  as  guardian  of  the  young  sovereign.  A 
foreign  party,  too,  had  still  a  footing  in  the  kingdom,  for 
William  Marshal  had  been  unable  to  rid  himself  of  men  like 
Peter  Des  Roches  or  Faukes  de  Breaute,  who  had  fought  on 
the  royal  side  in  the  struggle  against  Lewis.  Hubert  had  to 
deal  too  with  the  anarchy  which  that  struggle  left  behind  it. 
From  the  time  of  the  Conquest  the  center  of  England  had 
been  covered  with  the  domains  of  great  nobles,  whose  long- 
ings were  for  feudal  independence,  and  whose  spirit  of  revolt 
had  been  held  in  check,  partly  by  the  stern  rule  of  the  kings, 
and  partly  by  their  creation  of  a  baronage  sprung  from  the 
Court  and  settled  for  the  most  part  in  the  north.  The  op- 
pression of  John  united  both  the  older  and  these  newer 
houses  in  the  struggle  for  the  Charter.  But  the  character  of 
each  remained  unchanged,  and  the  close  of  the  struggle  saw 
the  feudal  party  break  out  in  their  old  lawlessness  and  defi- 
ance of  the  crown.  Fora  time  the  anarchy  of  Stephen'  sdays 
seemed  revived.  But  the  Justiciar  was  resolute  to  crush  it, 
and  he  was  backed  by  the  strenuous  efforts  of  Stephen  Lang- 
ton.  The  Earl  of  Chester,  the  head  of  the  feudal  baronage, 
though  he  rose  in  armed  rebellion,  quailed  before  the  march 
of  Hubert  and  the  Primate's  threats  of  excommunication.  A 
more  formidable  foe  remained  in  the  Frenchman,  Faukes  de 
Breaute,  the  sheriff  of  six  counties,  with  six  royal  castles  in 
his  hands,  and  allied  both  with  the  rebel  barons  and  Llewelyn 
of  Wales,  His  cuslle  of  Bedford  was  besieged  for  twp 


180  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

months  before  its  surrender,  and  the  stern  justice  of  Hubert 
hanged  the  twenty-four  knights  and  their  retainers  who 
formed  the  garrison  before  its  walls.  The  blow  was  effectual; 
the  royal  castles  were  surrendered  by  the  barons,  and  the 
land  was  once  more  at  peace.  Freed  from  foreign  soldiery, 
the  country  was  freed  also  from  the  presence  of  the  foreign 
legate.  Langton.  wrested  a  promise  from  Rome  that  so  long 
as  he  lived  no  future  legate  should  be  sent  to  England,  and 
with  Pandulf's  resignation  in  1221  the  direct  interference  of 
the  Papacy  in  the 'government  of  the  realm  came  to  an  end. 
But  even  these  services  of  the  Primate  were  small  compared 
with  his  services  to  English  freedom.  Throughout  his  life 
the  Charter  was  the  fiist  object  of  his  care.  The  omission  of 
the  articles  which  restricted  the  royal  power  over  taxation  in 
the  Charter  which  was  published  at  Henry's  accession  was 
doubtless  due  to  the  Archbishop's  absence  and  disgrace  at 
Rome.  The  suppression  of  disorder  seems  to  have  revived 
the  older  spirit  of  resistance  among  the  royal  ministers  ;  when 
Langton  demanded  a  fresh  confirmation  of  the  Charter  in 
Parliament  at  London,  William  Brewer,  one  of  the  King's 
councilors,  protested  that  it  had  been  extorted  by  force,  and 
was  without  legal  validity.  "  If  you  loved  the  king,  William," 
the  Primate  burst  out  in  anger,  "you  would  not  throw  a 
stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  the  peace  of  the  realm."  The 
king  was  cowed  by  the  Archbishop's  wrath,  and  at  once 
promised  observance  of  the  Charter.  Two  years  after,  its 
solemn  promulgation  was  demanded  by  the  Archbishop  and 
the  barons  as  the  price  of  a  subsidy,  and  Henry's  assent 
established  the  principle,  so  fruitful  of  constitutional  results, 
that  redress  of  wrongs  precedes  a  grant  to  the  crown. 

The  death  of  Stephen  Langton  in  1228  proved  a  heavy 
blow  to  English  freedom.  In  1227  Henry  had  declared  him- 
self of  age ;  and  though  Hubert  still  remained 
justiciar,  every  year  saw  him  more  powerless  in 
his  struggle  with  Rome  and  with  the  tendencies 
of  the  king.  In  the  medieval  theory  of  the  Papacy,  the 
constitution  of  Christendom  as  a  spiritual  realm  took  the 
feudal  form  of  the  secular  kingdoms  within  its  pale,  with 
the  Pope  for  sovereign,  bishops  for  his  barons,  the  clergy 
for  his  under-vassals.  As  the  king  demanded  aids  and 
subsidies  in  case  of  need  from  his  liegemen,  so  it  was  be^ 


HENRY   THE   THIRD.      1216   TO   1257.  181 

lieved  might  the  head  of  the  Church  from  the  priesthood. 
At  this  moment  the  Papacy,  exhausted  by  its  long  struggle 
with  Frederick  the  Second,  grew  more  and  more  extortionate 
in  its  demands.  It  regarded  England  as  a  vassal  kingdom, 
and  as  bound  to  aid  its  overlord.  The  baronage,  however, 
rejected  the  demand  of  aid  from  the  lait}r,  and  the  Pope 
fell  back  on  the  clergy.  He  demanded  a  tithe  of  all  the 
movables  of  the  priesthood,  and  a  threat  of  excommunica- 
tion silenced  their  murmurs.  Exaction  followed  exaction, 
the  very  rights  of  lay  patrons  were  set  aside,  and  under 
the  name  of  "  reserves  "  presentations  to  English  benefices 
were  sold  in  the  Papal  market,  while  Italian  clergy  were 
quartered  on  the  best  livings  of  the  Church.  The  general 
indignation  found  vent  at  last  in  a  wide  conspiracy  ;  letters 
from  "the  whole  body  of  those  who  prefer  to  die  rather 
than  be  ruined  by  the  Romans "  were  scattered  over  the 
kingdom  by  armed  men  ;  tithes  gathered  for  the  Pope  and 
foreign  clergy  were  seized  and  given  to  the  poor,  the  Papal 
commissioners  beaten,  and  their  bulls  trodden  under  foot. 
The  remonstrances  of  Rome  only  revealed  the  national 
character  of  the  movement ;  but  as  inquiry  proceeded  the 
hand  of  the  justiciar  himself  was  seen  to  have  been  at 
work.  Sheriffs  had  stood  idly  by  while  the  violence  was 
done ;  royal  letters  had  been  shown  by  the  rioters  as 
approving  their  acts ;  and  the  Pope  openly  laid  the  charge 
of  the  outbreak  on  the  secret  connivance  of  Hubert  de 
Burgh.  The  charge  came  at  a  time  when  Henry  was  in 
collision  with  his  minister,  to  whom  he  attributed  the  fail- 
ure of  his  attempts  to  regain  the  foreign  dominions  of  his 
house.  An  invitation  from  the  barons  of  Normandy  had 
been  rejected  through  Hubert's  remonstrances,  and  when  a 
great  armament  gathered  at  Portsmouth  for  a  campaign  in 
Poitou,  it  was  dispersed  for  want  of  transport  and  supplies. 
The  young  king  drew  his  sword  and  rushed  madly  on  the 
justiciar,  whom  he  charged  with  treason  and  corruption  by 
the  gold  of  France ;  but  the  quarrel  was  appeased,  and  the 
expedition  deferred  for  the  year.  The  failure  of  the  cam- 
paign in  the  following  year,  when  Henry  took  the  field  in 
Britanny  and  Poitou,  was  again  laid  at  the  door  of  Hubert, 
whose  opposition  was  said  to  have  prevented  an  engagement. 
The  Papal  accusation  filled  up  the  measure  of  Henry's  wrath. 


HISTOKY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Hubert  was  dragged  from  a  chapel  at  Brentwood  where  he 
had  taken  refuge,  and  a  smith  was  ordered  to  shackle  him. 
'-I  will  die  any  death/"  replied  the  smith,  "before  I  put 
iron  on  the  man  who  freed  England  from  the  stranger  and 
saved  Dover  from  France."  On  the  remonstrances  of  the 
Bishop  of  London  Hubert  was  replaced  in  sanctuary,  but 
hunger  compelled  him  to  surrender  ;  he  was  thrown  a  pris- 
oner into  the  Tower,  and  though  soon  released  he  remained 
powerless  in  the  realm.  His  fall  left  England  without  a 
check  to  the  rule  of  Henry  himself. 

There  was  a  certain  refinement  in  Henry's  temper  which 
won  him  affection  even  in  the  worst  days  of  his  rule.  The 
Henry  III.  Abbey-church  of  Westminster,  with  which  he  re- 
and  the  placed  the  ruder  minster  of  the  Confessor,  remains 
Aliens.  a  monument  of  his  artistic  taste.  He  was  a 
patron  and  friend  of  artists  and  men  of  letters,  and  himself 
skilled  in  the  "gay  science"  of  the  troubadour.  From  the 
cruelty,  the  lust,  the  impiety  of  his  father  he  was  absolutely 
free.  But  of  the  political  capacity  which  had  been  the  char- 
acteristic of  his  house  he  had  little  or  none.  Profuse, 
changeable,  impulsive  alike  in  good  and  ill,  unbridled  in 
temper  and  tongue,  reckless  in  insult  and  wit,  Henry's 
delight  was  in  the  display  of  an  empty  and  prodigal  mag- 
nificence, his  one  notion  of  government  a  dream  of  arbitrary 
power.  But  frivolous  as  the  king's  mood  was,  he  clung 
with  a  weak  man's  obstinacy  to  a  distinct  line  of  policy. 
He  cherished  the  hope  of  recovering  his  heritage  across 
the  sea.  He  believed  in  the  absolute  power  of  the  crown ; 
and  looked  on  the  pledges  of  the  Great  Charter  as  promises 
which  force  had  wrested  from  the  king  and  which  force 
could  wrest  back  again.  The  claim  which  the  French 
kings  were  advancing  to  a  divine  and  absolute  power  gave 
a  sanction  in  Henry's  mind  to  the  claim  of  absolute  authority 
which  was  still  maintained  by  his  favorite  advisers  in  the 
royal  council.  The  death  of  Langton,  the  fall  of  Hubert 
de  Burgh,  left  him  free  to  surround  himself  with  depend- 
ent ministers,  mere  agents  of  the  royal  will.  Hosts  of 
hungry  Poitevins  and  Bretons  were  at  once  summoned  over 
to  occupy  the  royal  castles  and  fill  the  judicial  and  admin- 
istrative posts  about  the  court.  His  marriage  with  Elea- 
nor of  Provence  was  followed  by  the  arrival  in  England  of 


HENRY  THE  THIRD.      1216   TO    1257.  183 

the  queen's  uncles.  The  "  Savoy,"  as  his  house  in  the 
Strand  was  named,  still  recalls  Peter  of  Savoy,  who  arrived 
five  years  later  to  take  for  a  while  the  chief  place  at  Henry's 
council-board  ;  another  brother,  Boniface,  was  on  Archbishop 
Edmund's  death  consecrated  to  the  highest  post  in  the  realm 
save  the  crown  itself,  the  Archbishopric  of  Canterbury. 
The  young  Primate,  like  his  brother,  brought  with  him 
foreign  fashions  strange  enough  to  English  folk.  His 
armed  retainers  pillaged  the  markets.  His  own  archiepis- 
copal  fist  felled  to  the  ground  the  prior  of  St.  Bartholo- 
mew-by-Smithfield,  who  opposed  his  visitation.  London 
was  roused  by  the  outrage  ;  on  the  king's  refusal  to  do 
justice  a  noisy  crowd  of  citizens  surrounded  the  Primate's 
house  at  Lambeth  with  cries  of  vengeance,  and  the  "hand- 
some archbishop,"  as  his  followers  styled  him,  was  glad  to 
escape  oversea.  This  brood  of  Provei^als  was  followed  in 
1243  by  the  arrival  of  the  Poitevin  relatives  of  John's  queen, 
Isabella  of  Angoul6me.  Aymer  was  made  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester ;  William  of  Valence  received  the  earldom  of  Pem- 
broke. Even  the  king's  jester  was  a  Poitevin.  Hundreds 
of  their  dependants  followed  these  great  lords  to  find  a 
fortune  in  the  English  realm.  The  Poitevin  lords  brought 
in  their  train  a  bevy  of  ladies  in  search  of  husbands,  and 
three  English  earls  who  were  in  royal  wardship  were  wedded 
by  the  king  to  foreigners.  The  whole  machinery  of  admin- 
istration passed  into  the  hands  of  men  ignorant  and  con- 
temptuous of  the  principles  of  English  government  or 
English  law.  Their  rule  was  a  mere  anarchy  ;  the  very  re- 
tainers of  the  royal  household  turned  robbers,  and  pillaged 
foreign  merchants  in  the  precincts  of  the  court ;  corruption 
invaded  the  judicature ;  Henry  de  Bath,  a  justiciar,  was 
proved  to  have  openly  taken  bribes  and  to  have  adjudged  to 
himself  disrupted  estates. 

That  misgovernment  of  this  kind  should  have  gone  on  un- 
checked, in  defiance  of  the  provisions  of  the  Charter,  was 
owing  to  the  disunion  and  sluggishness  of  the  j^  Barons 
English  baronage.     On  the  first  arrival   of  the      and  the 
foreigners,  Richard,  the  Earl  Marshal,  a  son  of     Church, 
the  great  Regent,  stood  forth  as  their  leader  to  demand  th«e 
expulsion   of  the  strangers   from   the   royal    Council,    and 
though  deserted  by  the  bulk  of  the  nobles,  he  defeated  the 


184  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

foreign  forces  cent  against  him,  and  forced  the  king  to  treat 
for  peace.  But  at  this  moment  the  earl  was  drawn  by  an 
intrigue  of  Peter  des  Eoches  to  Ireland  ;  he  fell  in  a  petty 
skirmish,  and  the  barons  were  left  without  a  head.  Edmund 
Eich,  whom  we  have  seen  as  an  Oxford  teacher  and  who  had 
'risen  to  the  Archbishopric  of  Canterbury,  forced  the  king 
to  dismiss  Peter  from  court  ;  but  there  was  no  real  change 
of  system,  and  the  remonstrances  of  the  Archbishop  and  of 
Eobert  Grosseteste,  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  remained  fruitless. 
In  the  long  interval  of  misrule  which  followed,  the  financial 
straits  of  the  king  forced  him  to  heap  exaction  on  exaction. 
The  Forest  Laws  were  used  as  a  means  of  extortion,  sees  and 
abbeys  were  kept  vacant,  loans  were  wrested  from  lords  and 
prelates,  the  Court  itself  lived  at  free  quarters  wherever  it 
moved.  Supplies  of  this  kind  however  were  utterly  insuffi- 
cient to  defray  the  cost  of  the  king's  prodigality.  A  sixth 
of  the  royal  revenue  was  wasted  in  pensions  to  foreign  favor- 
ites. The  debts  of  the  crown  mounted  to  four  times  its 
annual  income.  Henry  was  forced  to  appeal  to  the  Great 
Council  of  the  realm,  and  aid  was  granted  on  condition  that 
the  king -confirmed  the  Charter.  The  Charter  was  confirmed 
and  steadily  disregarded  ;  and  the  resentment  of  the  barons 
expressed  itself  in  a  determined  protest  and  a  refusal  of  further 
subsidies.  In  spite  of  their  refusal  however  Henry  gathered 
money  enough  for  a  costly  expedition  for  the  recovery  of 
Poitou.  The  attempt  ended  in  failure  and  shame.  At  Tail- 
lebourg  the  forces  under  Henry  fled  in  disgraceful  rout  be- 
fore the  French  as  far  as  Saintes,  and  only  the  sudden  illness 
of  Lewis  the  Xinth  and  a  disease  which  scattered  his  army 
saved  Bordeaux  from  the  conquerors.  The  treasury  was 
drained,  and  Henry  was  driven  to  make  a  fresh  appeal  to  the 
baronage.  The  growing  resolution  of  the  nobles  to  enforce 
good  government  was  seen  in  their  demand  that  the  confir- 
mation of  the  Charter  was  to  be  followed  by  the  election  of 
Justiciar,  Chancellor,  and  Treasurer  in  the  Great  Council, 
and  that  a  perpetual  Council  was  to  attend  the  king  and  de- 
vise further  reforms.  The  plan  broke  against  Henry's  re- 
sistance and  a  Papal  prohibition.  The  scourge  of  Papal 
taxation  fell  heavily  on  the  clergy.  After  vain  appeals  to 
Eome  and  to  the  king,  Archbishop  Edmund  retired  to  an 
exile  of  despair  at  Pontigny,  and  tax-gatherer  after  tax- 


HENRY   THE   THIRD.      1216    TO    1257.  185 

gatherer  with  powers  of  excommunication,  suspension  from 
orders,  and  presentation  to  benefices,  descended  on  the 
unhappy  priesthood.  Thte  wholesale  pillage  kindled  a  wide 
spirit  of  resistance.  Oxford  gave  the  signal  by  hunting  a 
Papal  legate  out  of  the  city,  amid  cries  of  "usurer  "arid 
"  simoniac  "  from  the  mob  of  students.  Fulk  Fitz-Varenne 
in  the  name  of  the  barons  bade  a  Papal  collector  begone  out 
of  England.  "If  you  tarry  three  days  longer,"  he  added, 
"you  and  your  company  shall  be  cut  to  pieces. "  For  a 
time  Henry  himself  was  swept  away  by  the  tide  of  national 
indignation.  Letters  from  the  king,  the  nobles  and  the 
prelates  protested  against  the  Papal  exactions,  and  orders 
were  given  that  no  money  should  be  exported  from  the  realm. 
But  the  threat  of  interdict  soon  drove  Henry  back  on  a 
policy  of  spoliation,  in  which  he  went  hand  in  hand  with 
Rome. 

The  story  of  this  period  of  misrule  has  been  preserved  for 
us  by  an  annalist  whose  pages  glow  with  the  new  outburst  of 
patriotic  feeling  which  this  common  oppression  of 
the  people  and  the  clergy  had  produced.  Matthew 
Paris  is  the  greatest,  as  he  is  in  reality  the  last,  of 
our  monastic  historians.  The  school  of  S.  Alban's  survived 
indeed  till  a  far  later  time,  but  the  writers  dwindle  into  mere 
annalists  whose  view  is  bounded  by  the  abbey  precincts,  and 
whose  work  is  as  colorless  as  it  is  jejune.  In  Matthew  the 
breadth  and  precision  of  the  narrative,  the  copiousness  of  his 
information  on  topics  whether  national  or  European,  the 
general  fairness  and  justice  of  his  comments,  are  only  sur- 
passed by  the  patriotic  fire  and  enthusiasm  of  the  whole. 
He  had  succeeded  Roger  of  Wendover  as  chronicler  at  S. 
Alban's  ;  and  the  Greater  Chronicle  with  an  abridgement  of 
it  which  has  long  passed  under  the  name  of  Matthew  of 
Westminster,  a  "  History  of  the  English, "and  the  "  Lives  of 
the  Earlier  Abbots,"  were  only  a  few  among  the  voluminous 
works  which  attest  his  prodigious  industry.  He  was  an 
artist  as  well  as  an  historian,  and  many  of  the  manuscripts 
which  are  preserved  are  illustrated  by  his  own  hand.  A 
large  circle  of  correspondents — bishops  like  Grosseteste, 
ministers  like  Hubert  de  Burgh,  officials  like  Alexander  dc 
Swereford — furnished  him  with  minute  accounts  of  political 
and  ecclesiastical  proceedings.  Pilgrims  from,  the  East  and 


180  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Papal  agents  brought  news  of  foreign  events  to  his  scripto- 
rium at  S.  Alban's.  He  had  access  to  and  quotes  largely 
from  state  documents,  charters,  and  exchequer  rolls.  The 
frequency  of  the  royal  visits  to  the  abbey  brought  him  a 
store  of  political  intelligence,  and  Henry  himself  contributed 
to  the  great  chronicle  which  has  preserved  with  so  terrible  a 
faithfulness  the  memory  of  his  weakness  and  misgoverument. 
On  one  solemn  feast-day  the  king  recognized  Matthew,  and 
bidding  him  sit  on  the  middle  step  between  the  floor  and  the 
throne,  begged  him  to  write  the  story  of  the  day's  proceedings. 
AVhile  on  a  visit  to  S.  Alban's  he  invited  him  to  his  table 
and  chamber,  and  enumerated  by  name  two  hundred  and 
fifty  of  the  English  baronies  for  his  information.  But  all  this 
royal  patronage  has  left  little  mark  on  his  work.  "  The 
case,"  as  he  says,  "  of  historical  writers  is  hard,  for  if  they 
tell  the  truth  they  provoke  men,  and  if  they  write  what  is 
false  they  offend  God."  With  all  the  fulness  of  the  school 
of  court  historians,  such  as  Benedict  or  Hoveden,  Matthew 
Paris  combines  an  independence  and  patriotism  which  is 
strange  to  their  pages.  He  denounces  with  the  same  un- 
sparing energy  the  oppression  of  the  Papacy  and  the  king. 
His  point  of  view  is  neither  that  of  a  courtier  nor  of  a 
churchman,  but  of  an  Englishman,  and  the  new  national 
tone  of  his  chronicle  is  but  an  echo  of  the  national  sentiment 
which  at  last  bound  nobles  and  yeomen  and  churchmen  to- 
gether into  a  people  resolute  to  wrest  freedom  from  the 
crown. 

Section  VI.— The  Friars. 

[Authorities. — Eccleston's  Tract  on  their  arrival  in  England  and  Adam  Marsh's 
Letters,  with  Mr.  Brewer's  admirable  Preface,  in  the  "  Monumenta  Franciscana  '' 
of  the  Rolls  series.  Grosseteste's  Letters  in  the  same  series,  edited  by  Mr.  Luard. 
For  a  general  account  of  the  whole  movement,  see  Milman's  "  Latin  Christianity," 
vol.  iv.  caps.  9  and  10.] 

From  the  tedious  record  -of  misgovernment  and  political 
weakness  which  stretches  over  the  forty  years  we  have  passed 

England     through,  we  turn  with  relief  to  the  story  of  the 

and  the      Friars. 

Church.  Never,  as  we  have  seen,  had  the  priesthood 
wielded  such  boundless  power  over  Christendom  as  in  the 
days  of  Innocent  the  Third  and  his  immediate  successors. 


THE   FRIARS.  187 

Bui  its  religious  hold  on  the  people  was  loosening  day  by  day. 
The  old  reverence  for  the  Papacy  was  fading  away  before 
the  universal  resentment  at  its  -political  ambition,  its  lavish 
use  of  interdict  and  excommunication  for  purely  secular 
ends,  its  degradation  of  the  most  sacred  sentences  hi  to  means 
of  financial  extortion.  In  Italy  the  struggle  that  was  open- 
ing between  Rome  and  Frederick  the  Second  disclosed  a 
spirit  of  skepticism  which  among  the  Epicurean  poets  of 
Florence  denied  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  attacked 
the  very  foundations  of  the  faith  itself.  In  Southern  Gaul, 
Languedoc  and  Provence  had  embraced  the  heresy  of  the 
Albigenses,  and  thrown  off  all  allegiance  to  the  Papacy. 
Even  in  England,  though  there  were  no  signs  as  yet  of  reli- 
gious revolt,  and  though  the  political  action  of  Rome  had 
been  in  the  main  on  the  side  of  freedom,  there  was  a  spirit 
of  resistance  to  its  interference  with  national  concerns  which 
broke  out  in  the  struggle  against  John.  "The  Pope  has  no 
part  in  secular  matters,"  had  been  the  reply  of  London  to 
the  interdict  of  Honorius.  And  within  the  English  Church 
itself  there  was  much  to  call  for  reform.  Its  attitude  in  the 
strife  for  the  Charter  as  well  as  the  after  work  of  the  Pri- 
mate had  made  it  more  popular  than  ever  ;  but  its  spiritual 
energy  was  less  than  its  political.  The  disuse  of  preaching, 
the  decline  of  the  monastic  orders  into  rich  landowners,  the 
non-residence  and  ignorance  of  the  parish  priests,  robbed  the 
clergy  of  spiritual  influence.  The  abuses  of  the  time  foiled 
even  the  energy  of  such  men  as  Bishop  Grosseteste  of  Lincoln. 
His  constitutions  forbid  the  clergy  to  haunt  taverns,  to 
gamble,  to  share  in  drinking  bouts,  to  mix  in  the  riot  and 
debauchery  of  the  life  of  the  baronage.  But  such  prohibi- 
tions only  witness  to  the  prevalence  of  the  evils  they  de- 
nounce. Bishops  and  deans  were  withdrawn  from  their 
ecclesiastical  duties  to  act  as  ministers,  judges,  or  ambassa- 
dors. Benefices  were  heaped  in  hundreds  at  a  time  on  royal 
favorites  like  John  Hansel.  Abbeys  absorbed  the  tithes  of 
parishes,  and  then  served  them  by  half-starved  vicars,  while 
exemptions  purchased  from  Rome  shielded  the  scandalous 
lives  of  canons  and  monks  from  all  episcopal  discipline.  And 
behind  all  this  was  a  group  of  secular  statesmen  and  scholars, 
waging  indeed  no  open  warfare  with  the  Church,  but  noting 
with  bitter  sarcasm  its  abuses  and  its  faults. 


188  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

To  bring  the  world  back  again  within  the  pale  of  the 
Church  \vas  the  aim  of  two  religious  orders  which  sprang 
suddenly  to  life  at  the  opening  of  the  thirteenth 
The  Friars,  century.  The  zeal  of  the  Spaniard  Dominic  was 
•  roused  at  the  sight  of  the  lordly  prelates  who 
sought  by  fire  and  sword  to  win  the  Albigensian  heretics  to 
the  faith.  "Zeal,"  he  cried,  "must  be  met  by  zeal,  low- 
liness by  lowliness,  false  sanctity  by  real  sanctity,  preaching 
lies  by  preaching  truth."  His  fiery  ardor  and  rigid  orthodoxy 
were  seconded  by  the  mystical  piety,  the  imaginative  enthu- 
siasm of  Francis  of  Assisi.  The  life  of  Francis  falls  like  a 
stream  of  tender  light  across  the  darkness  of  the  time.  In 
the  frescoes  of  Giotto  or  the  verse  of  Dante  we  see  him  take 
Poverty  for  his  bride.  He  strips  himself  of  all,  he  flings  his 
very  clothes  at  his  father's  feet,  that  he  may  be  one  with 
Nature  and  God.  His  passionate  verse  claims  the  Moon  for 
his  sister  and  the  Sun  for  his  brother,  he  calls  on  his  brother 
the  Wind,  and  his  sister  the  Water.  His  last  faint  cry  was  a 
"  Welcome,  Sister  Death  !  "  Strangely  as  the  two  men  dif- 
fered from  each  other,  their  aim  was  the  same — to  convert 
the  heathen,  to  extirpate  heresy,  to  reconcile  knowledge  with 
orthodoxy,  to  carry  the  Gospel  to  the  poor.  The  work  was 
to  be  done  by  the  entire  reversal  of  the  older  monasticism,  by 
seeking  personal  salvation  in  effort  for  the  salvation  of  their 
fellow-men,  by  exchanging  the  solitary  of  the  cloister  for 
the  preacher,  the  monk  for  the  friar.  To  force  the 
new  "brethren"  into  entire  dependence  on  those  among 
whom  they  labored,  their  vow  of  Poverty  was  turned  into  a 
stern  reality  ;  the  "Begging  Friars"  were  to  subsist  on  the 
alms  of  the  poor,  they  might  possess  neither  money  nor  lands, 
the  very  houses  in  which  they  lived  were  to  be  held  in  trust 
for  them  by  others.  The  tide  of  popular  enthusiasm  which 
welcomed  their  appearance  swept  before  it  the  reluctance  of 
Rome,  the  jealousy  of  the  older  orders,  the  opposition  of  the 
parochial  priesthood.  Thousands  of  brethren  gathered  in  a 
few  years  round  Francis  and  Dominic;  and  the  begging 
preachers,  clad  in  their  coarse  frock  of  serge,  with  a  girdle 
of  rope  round  their  waist,  wandered  barefooted  as  mission- 
aries over  Asia,  battled  with  heresy  in  Italy  and  Gaul,  lectured 
in  the  Universities,  and  preached  and  toiled  among  the 
poor. 


THE    FRIARS.  189 

To  the  towns  especially  the  coming  \=»f  the  Friars  was  a 
religious  revolution.  They  had  been  left  for  the  most  part 
to  the  worst  and  most  ignorant  of  the  clergy,  the  j^  Friars 
mass-priest,  whose  sole  subsistence  lay  in  his  fees,  and  the 
Burgher  and  artisan  were  left  to  spell  out  what  re-  Towns, 
ligious  instruction  they  might  from  the  gorgeous  ceremonies 
of  the  Church's  ritual,  or  the  scriptural  pictures,  and  sepul- 
tures which  were  graven  on  the  walls  of  its  minsters.  We  can 
hardly  wonder  at  the  burst  of  enthusiasm  which  welcomed 
the  itinerant  preacher,  whose  fervid  appeal,  coarse  wit,  and 
familiar  story  brought  religion  into  the  fair  and  the  market- 
place. The  Black  Friars  of  Dominic,  the  Gray  Friars  of 
Francis,  were  received  with  the  same  delight.  As  the  older 
orders  had  chosen  the  country,  the  Friars  chose  the  town. 
They  had  hardly  landed  at  Dover  before  they  made  straight 
for  London  and  Oxford.  In  their  ignorance  of  the  road  the 
two  first  Gray  Brothers  lost  their  way  in  the  woods  between 
Oxford  and  Baldon,  and  fearful  of  the  night  and  of  the 
floods,  turned  aside  to  a  grange  of  the  monks  of  Abingdon. 
Their  ragged  clothes  and  foreign  gestures,  as  they  prayed 
for  hospitality,  led  the  porter  to  take  them  for  jongleurs,  the 
jesters  and  jugglers  of  the  day,  and  the  news  of  this  break  in 
the  monotony  of  their  lives  brought  friar,  sacrist,  and  cellarer 
to  the  door  to  welcome  them  and  witness  their  tricks.  The 
disappointment  was  too  much  for  the  temper  of  the  monks, 
and  the  brothers  were  kicked  roughly  from  the  gate  to  find 
their  night's  lodging  under  a  tree.  But  the  welcome  of  the 
townsmen  made  up  everywhere  for  the  ill-will  and  opposi- 
tion of  both  clergy  and  monks.  The  work  of  the  Friars  was 
physical  as  well  as  moral.  The  rapid  progress  of  population 
within  the  boroughs  had  outstripped  the  sanitary  regulations 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  fever  or  plague  or  the  more  terrible 
scourge  of  leprosy  festered  in  the  wretched  hovels  of  the 
suburbs.  It  was  to  haunts  such  as  these  that  Francis  had 
pointed  his  disciples,  and  the  Gray  Brethren  at  once  fixed 
themselves  in  the  meanest  and  poorest  quarters  of  each  town. 
Their  first  work  lay  in  the  noisome  lazar-houses ;  it  was 
amongst  the  lepers  that  they  commonly  chose  the  site  of 
their  homes.  At  London  they  settled  in  the  shambles  of 
Newgate  ;  at  Oxford  they  made  theic  way  to  the  swampy 
ground  between  its  walls  and  the  streams  of  Thames.  Huts 


190  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  mud  and  timber,  as  mean  as  the  huts  around  them,  rose 
within  the  rough  fence  and  ditch  that  bounded  the  Friary. 
The  order  of  Francis  made  a  hard  fight  against  the  taste  for 
sumptuous  buildings  and  for  greater  personal  comfort  which 
characterized  the  time.  "I  did  not  enter  into  religion  to 
build  walls/'  protested  an  English  provincial  when  the  breth- 
ren protested  for  a  larger  house  ;  and  Albert  of  Pisa  ordered  a 
stone  cloister,  which  the  burgesses  of  Southampton  had  built 
for  them,  to  be  razed  to  the  ground.  "You  need  no  little 
mountains  to  lift  your  heads  to  heaven,"  was  his  scornful 
reply  to  a  claim  for  pillows.  None  but  the  sick  went  shod. 
An  Oxford  Friar  found  a  pair  of  shoes  one  morning,  and  wore 
them  at  matins.  At  night  he  dreamt  that  robbers  leapt  on 
him  in  a  dangerous  pass  between  Gloucester  and  Oxford  with 
shouts  of  "  Kill,  kill  !  "  "  I  am  a  friar/'  shrieked  the  terror- 
stricken  brother.  "  You  lie,"  was  the  instant  answer,  "for 
you  go  shod."  The  Friar  lifted  up  his  foot  in  disproof,  but 
the  shoe  was  there.  In  an  agony  of  repentance  he  woke  and 
flung  the  pair  out  of  window. 

It  was  with  less  success  that  the  order  struggled  against 
the  passion  for  knowledge.  Their  vow  of  poverty,  rigidly 
The  Friars  interpreted  as  it  was  by  their  founders,  would 
and  the  Uni-  have  denied  them  the  possession  of  books  or  mate- 
versities.  rja}s  for  study.  "I  am  your  breviary,  I  am  your 
breviary,"  Francis  cried  passionately  to  a  novice  who  asked 
for  a  psalter.  When  the  news  of  a  great  doctor's  reception 
was  brought  to  him  at  Paris,  his  countenance  fell.  "  I  am 
afraid,  my  son,"  he  replied,  "that  such  doctors  will  be  the 
destruction  of  my  vineyard.  They  are  the  true  doctors  who 
with  the  meekness  of  wisdom  show  forth  good  works  for  the 
edification  of  their  neighbors. "  At  a  later  time  Roger  Bacon, 
as  we  have  seen,  was  suffered  to  possess  neither  ink,  parch- 
ment, nor  books  ;  and  only  the  Pope's  injunctions  could  dis- 
pense with  the  stringent  observance  of  the  rule.  But  one 
kind  of  knowledge  indeed  their  work  almost  forced  on  them. 
The  popularity  of  their  preaching  soon  led  them  to  the 
deeper  study  of  theology.  Within  a  short  time  after  their 
establishment  in  England  we  find  as  many  as  thirty  readers 
or  lecturers  appointed  at  Hereford,  Leicester,  Bristol,  and 
other  places,  and  a  regular  succession  of  teachers  provided 
at  each  University.  The  Oxford  Dominicans  lectured  on 


THE   FRIARS.  191 

theology  in  the  nave  of  their  new  chnrch,  while  philosophy 
was  taught  in  the  cloister.  The  first  provincial  of  the  Gray 
Friars  built  a  school  in  their  Oxford  house,  and  persuaded 
Grosseteste  to  lecture  there.  His  influence  after  his  promo- 
tion to  the  see  of  Lincoln  was  steadily  exerted  to  secure 
study  among  the  Friars,  and  their  establishment  in  the 
University.  He  was  ably  seconded  by  his  scholar,  Adam 
Marsh,  or  de  Marisco,  under  whom  the  Franciscan  school  at 
Oxford  obtained  a  reputation  throughout  Christendom, 
uyons,  Paris,  and  Koln  borrowed  from  it  their  professors  : 
it  was  owing,  indeed,  to  its  influence  that  Oxford  now  rose 
to  a  position  hardly  inferior  to  that  of  Paris  itself  as  a  center 
of  scholasticism.  The  three  most  profound  and  original  of 
the  schoolmen — Roger  Bacon,  Duns  Scotus,  and  Ockham — 
were  among  its  scholars  ;  and  they  were  followed  by  a  crowd 
of  teachers  hardly  less  illustrious  in  their  day. 

But  the  result  of  this  powerful  impulse  was  soon  seen  to  be 
fatal  to  the  wider  intellectual  activity  which  had  till  now 
characterized  the  Universities.  Theology  in  its 

scholastic  form,  which  now  found  its  only  efficient     Schplas- 
.     ,         , .  ,  , .   .  ,      ticism. 

rivals  in  practical  studies  such  as  medicine  and 

law,  resumed  its  supremacy  in  the  schools  ;  while  Aristotle, 
who  had  been  so  long  held  at  bay  as  the  most  dangerous  foe 
of  medieval  faith,  was  now  turned  by  the  adoption  of  his 
logical  method  in  the  discussion  and  definition  of  theological 
dogma  into  its  unexpected  ally.  It  was  this  very  method 
that  led  to  "  that  unprofitable  subtlety  and  curiosity"  which 
Lord  Bacon  notes  as  the  vice  of  the  scholastic  philosophy. 
But  "  certain  it  is" — to  continue  the  same  great  thinker's  com- 
ment on  the  Friars — "  that  if  these  schoolmen  to  their  great 
thirst  of  truth  and  unwearied  travel  of  wit  had  joined  variety 
of  reading  and  contemplation,  they  had  proved  excellent 
lights  to  the  great  advancement  of  all  learning  and  knowl- 
edge." What,  amidst  all  their  errors,  they  undoubtedly  did 
was  to  insist  on  the  necessity  of  rigid  demonstration  and 
a  more  exact  use  of  words,  to  introduce  a  clear  and  me- 
thodical treatment  of  all  subjects  into  discussion,  and  above 
a1.!  to  substitute  an  appeal  to  reason  for  unquestioning  obe- 
dience to  authority.  It  was  by  this  critical  tendency,  by  the 
new  clearness  and  precision  which  scholasticism  gave  to 
inquiry,  that  in  spite  of  the  trivial  questions  with  which  it 


192,  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

often  concerned  itself,  it  trained  the  human  mind  through 
the  next  two  centuries  to  a  temper  which  fitted  it  to  profit 
by  the  great  disclosure  of  knowledge  that  brought  about  the 
Eenascence.  And  it  is  to  the  same  spirit  of  fearless  inquiry 
as  well  as  to  the  strong  popular  sympathies  which  their  very 
constitution  necessitated  that  we  must  attribute  the  influence 
which  the  Friars  undoubtedly  exerted  in  the  coming  struggle 
between  the  people  and  the  crown.  Their  position  is  clearly 
and  strongly  marked  throughout  the  whole  contest.  The 
University  of  Oxford,  which  had  now  fallen  under  the  direc- 
tion of  their  teaching,  stood  first  in  its  resistance  to  Papal 
exactions  and  its  claim  of  English  liberty.  The  classes  in 
the  towns  on  whom  the  influence  of  the  Friars  told  most 
directly  were  the  steady  supporters  of  freedom  throughout 
the  Barons'  War.  Adam  Marsh  was  the  closest  friend  and 
confidant  both  of  Grosseteste  and  Earl  Simon  of  Montfort. 


Section  VII.— The  Barons'  War.   1258—1265. 

[Authorities.—  At  the  very  outset  of  this  important  period  we  lose  the  priceless 
aid  of  Matthew  Paris.  He  is  the  last  of  the  great  chroniclers  ;  the  Chronicles  of 
his  successor  at  S.  Alban's,  Rishanger  (published  by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls),  are 
scant  and  lifeless  jottings,  somewhat  enlarged  for  this  period  by  his  fragment  on 
the  Barons'  War  (published  by  Camden  Society).  Something  may  be  gleaned 
from  the  annals  of  Burton,  Melrose,  Dunstable,  \Vaverley,  Osney,  and  Lanercost, 
the  Royal  Letters,  the  (royalist)  Chronicle  of  Wykes,  and  (for  London)  the  "Liber 
de  Antiquis  Legibus."  Mr.  Blaauw  has  given  a  useful  summary  of  the  period  in 
his  "Barons'  War/'J 

When  a  thunderstorm  once  forced  the  king,  as  he  was 
rowing  on  the  Thames,  to  take  refuge  at  the  palace  of  the 
Bishop  of  Durham,  Earl  Simon  of  Montfort,  who  was  a  guest 
of  the  pre-late,  met  the  royal  barge  with  assurances  that  the 
storm  was  drifting  away,  and  that  there  was  nothing  to  fear. 
Henry's  petulant  wit  broke  out  in  his  reply.  "  If  I  fear  the 
thunder,"  said  the  king,  "  I  fear  you,  Sir  Earl,  more  than 
all  the  thunder  in  the  world." 

The  man  whom  Henry  dreaded  as  the  champion  of  English 
freedom  was  himself  a  foreigner,  the  son  of  a  Simon  de  Mont- 
fort  whose  name  had  become  memorable  for  his 
ruthless  crusade  against  the  Albigensian  heretics 
in  Southern  Gaul.  Though  fourth  son  of  this 
crusader,  Simon  became  possessor  of  the  English  earldom 


THE  BARONS'  WAR.     1258  TO  1265.  193 

of  Leicester,  which  lie  inherited  through  his  mother,  and  a 
secret  match  with  Eleanor,  the  king's  sister  and  widow  of 
the  second  William  Marshal,  linked  him  to  the  royal  house. 
The  baronage,  indignant  at  this  sudden  alliance  with  a 
stranger,  rose  in  a  revolt  which  failed  only  through  the  deser- 
tion of  their  head,  Earl  Richard  of  Cornwall  ;  while  the  cen- 
sures of  the  Church  on  Eleanor's  breach  of  a  vow  of  chastity, 
which  she  had  made  at  her  first  husband's  death,  were  hardly 
averted  by  a  journey  to  Rome.  Simon  returned  to  find  the 
changeable  king  quickly  alienated  from  him  and  to  be  driven 
by  a  burst  of  royal  passion  from  the  realm.  He  was,  how- 
ever, soon  restored  to  favor,  and  before  long  took  his  stand 
in  the  front  rank  of  the  patriot  leaders.  In  1248  he  was  ap- 
pointed Governor  of  Gascony,  where  the  stern  justice  of  his 
rule,  and  the  heavy  taxation  which  his  enforcement  of  order 
made  necessary,  earned  the  hatred  of  the  disorderly  nobles. 
The  complaints  of  the  Gascons  brought  about  an  open  breach 
with  the  king.  To  Earl  Simon's  offer  of  the  surrender  of 
his  post  if  the  money  he  had  spent  in  the  royal  service  were, 
as  Henry  had  promised,  repaid  him,  the  king  hotly  retorted 
that  he  was  bound  by  no  promise  to  a  false  traitor.  Simon 
at  once  gave  Henry  the  lie  ;  "  and  but  that  thou  bearest  the 
name  of  king  it  had  been  a  bad  hour  for  thee  when  thou 
utteredst  such  a  word  !  "  A  formal  reconciliation  was  brought 
about,  and  the  earl  once  more  returned  to  Gascony,  but  be- 
fore winter  had  come  he  was  forced  to  withdraw  to  France. 
The  greatness  of  his  reputation  was  shown  in  an  offer  which 
its  nobles  made  him  of  the  regency  of  their  realm  during  the 
absence  of  King  Lewis  on  the  crusade.  But  the  offer  was 
refused  ;  and  Henry,  who  had  himself  undertaken  the  paci- 
fication of  Gascony,  was  glad  before  the  close  of  1253  to  recall 
its  old  ruler  to  do  the  work  he  had  failed  to  do.  Simon's 
character  had  now  thoroughly  developed.  He  had  inherited 
the  strict  and  severe  piety  of  his  father  ;  he  was  assiduous  in 
his  attendance  on  religious  services  whether  by  night  or  day  ; 
he  was  the  friend  of  Grosseteste  and  the  patron  of  the  Friars. 
In  his  correspondence  with  Adam  Marsh  we  see  him  finding 
patience  under  his  Gascon  troubles  in  the  perusal  of  tho 
Book  of  Job.  His  life  was  pure  and  singularly  temperate  ; 
he  was  noted  for  his  scant  indulgence  in  meat,  drink,  or 
sleep.  Socially  he  was  cheerful  and  pleasant  in  talk  ;  but  his 


194  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

natural  temper  was  quick  and  ardent,  his  sense  of  honor 
keen,  his  speech  rapid  and  trenchant.  His  impatience  of 
contradiction,  his  fiery  temper,  were  in  fact  the  great  stum- 
bling-blocks in  his  after  career.  But  the  one  characteristic 
which  overmastered  all  was  what  men  at  that  time  called  his 
"  constancy,"  the  firm  immovable  resolve  which  trampled 
even  death  under  foot  in  its  loyalty  to  the  right.  The  motto 
which  Edward  the  First  chose  as  his  device,  "Keep  troth," 
was  far  truer  as  the  device  of  Earl  Simon.  We  see  in  his 
correspondence  with  what  a  clear  discernment  of  its  difficul- 
ties both  at  home  and  abroad  he  "thought  it  unbecoming 
to  decline  the  danger  of  so  great  an  exploit  "as  the  reduction 
of  Gascony  to  peace  and  order  ;  but  once  undertaken,  he 
persevered  in  spite  of  the  opposition  he  met  with,  the  fail- 
ure of  all  support  or  funds  from  England,  and  the  king's 
desertion  of  his  cause,  till  the  work  was  done.  There  is  the 
same  steadiness  of  will  and  purpose  in  his  patriotism.  The 
letters  of  Grosseteste  show  how  early  he  had  learned  to  sym- 
pathize with  the  bishop  in  his  resistance  to  Rome,  and  at  the 
crisis  of  the  contest  he  offers  him  his  own  support  and  that  of 
his  associates.  He  sends  to  Adam  Marsh  a  tract  of  Grosse- 
teste's  on  "the  rule  of  a  kingdom  and  of  a  tyranny,"  sealed 
with  his  own  seal.  He  listens  patiently  to  the  advice  of  his 
friends  on  the  subject  of  his  household  or  his  temper.  "  Bet- 
ter is  a  patient  man,"  writes  honest  Friar  Adam,  "  than  a 
strong  man,  and  he  who  can  rule  his  own  temper  than  he 
who  storms  a  city."  "  What  use  is  it  to  provide  for  the 
peace  of  your  fellow-citizens  and  not  guard  the  peace  of  your 
own  household  ?  "  It  was  to  secure  "  the  peace  of  his  fel- 
low-citizens "  that  the  earl  silently  trained  himself  as  the 
tide  of  misgovernment  mounted  higher  and  higher,  and  the 
fruit  of  his  discipline  was  seen  when  the  crisis  came.  While 
other  men  wavered  and  faltered  and  fell  away,  the  enthusi- 
astic love  of  the  people  gathered  itself  round  the  stern,  grave 
soldier  who  "  stood  like  a  pillar,"  unshaken  by  promise  or 
threat  or  fear  of  death,  by  the  oath  he  had  sworn. 

In  England  affairs  were  going  from  bad  to  worse.     The 

Pope  still  weighed  heavily  on  the  Church.     Two  solemn  con- 

The  Provis-  filiations  of  the  Church  failed  to  bring  about  any 

ions  of      compliance  with  its  provisions.     In  1248,  in  1249, 

Oxford.      an(j  again  jn   1355^  the  Great  Council  fruitlessly 


THE  BARONS'  WAR.    1258  TO  1265.  195 

renewed  its  demand  for  a  regular  ministry,  and  the  growing 
resolve  of  the  nobles  to  enforce  good  government  was  seen 
in  their  offer  of  a  grant  on  condition  that  the  chief  officers 
of  the  crown  were  appointed  by  the  Council.  Henry  indig- 
nantly refused  the  offer,  and  sold  his  plate  to  the  citizens  of 
London  to  find  payment  for  his  household.  The  barons 
were  mutinous  and  defiant.  "  I  will  send  reapers  and  reap 
your  fields  for  you/'  Henry  had  threatened  Earl  Bigod  of 
Norfolk  when  he  refused  him  aid.  "  And  I  will  send  you 
back  the  heads  of  your  reapers,"  retorted  the  Earl.  Ham- 
pered by  the  profusion  of  the  court  and  by  the  refusal  of 
supplies,  the  crown  was  penniless,  yet  new  expenses  were 
incurred  by  Henry's  acceptance  of  a  Papal  offer  of  the  king- 
dom of  Sicily  in  favor  of  his  second  son  Edmund.  Shame 
had  fallen  on  the  English  arms,  and  the  king's  eldest  son, 
Edward,  had  been  disastrously  defeated  on  the  Marches  by 
Llewelyn  of  Wales.  The  tide  of  discontent,  which  was 
heightened  by  a  grievous  famine,  burst  ifs  bounds  in  the 
irritation  excited  by  the  new  demands  from  both  Honry  and 
Rome  with  which  the  year  1258  opened,  and  the  barons  re- 
paired in  arms  to  a  Great  Council  summoned  at  London. 
The  past  half-century  had  shown  both  the  strength  and 
weakness  of  the  Charter  :  its  strength  as  a  rallying-point 
for  the  baronage,  and  a  definite  assertion  of  rights  which 
the  king  could  be  made  to  acknowledge  ;  its  weakness  in 
providing  no  means  for  the  enforcement  of  its  own  stipula- 
tions. Henry  had  sworn  again  and  again  to  observe  the 
Charter,  and  his  oath  was  no  sooner  taken  than  it  was  un- 
scrupulously broken.  The  barons  had  secured  the  freedom 
of  the  realm  ;  the  secret  of  their  long  patience  during  the 
reign  of  Henry  lay  in  the  difficulty  of  securing  its  right  ad- 
ministration. It  was  this  difficulty  which  Earl  Simon  was 
prepared  to  solve.  With  the  Earl  of  Gloucester  he  now  ap- 
peared at  the  head  of  the  baronage  in  arms,  and  demanded 
the  appointment  of  a  committee  of  twenty-four  to  draw  up 
terms  for  the  reform  of  the  state.  Although  half  the  com- 
mittee consisted  of  royal  ministers  and  favorites,  it  was  im- 
possible to  resist  the  tide  of  popular  feeling.  By  the  "  Pro- 
visions of  Oxford"  it  was  agreed  that  the  Great  Council 
should  assemble  thrice  in  the  year,  whether  summoned  by  the 
king  or  no;  and  on  each  occasion  "the  Commonalty  shall 


196  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

elect  twelve  honest  men  who  shall  come  to  the  Parliaments, 
and  at  other  times  when  occasion  shall  be  when  the  king 
and  his  Council  shall  send  for  them,  to  treat  of  the  wants  of 
the  king  and  of  his  kingdom.  And  the  Commonalty  shall 
hold  as  established  that  which  these  Twelve  shall  do." 
Three  permanent  committees  were  named — one  to  reform 
the  Church,  one  to  negotiate  financial  aids,  and  a  Permanent 
Council  of  Fifteen  to  advise  the  king  in  the  ordinary  work 
of  government.  The  Justiciar,  Chancellor,  and  the  guard- 
ians of  the  king's  castles  swore  to  act  only  with  the  advice 
and  assent  of  the  Permanent  Council,  and  the  first  two 
great  officers,  with  the  Treasurer,  were  to  give  account  of 
their  proceedings  to  it  at  the  end  of  the  year.  Annual 
sheriffs  were  to  be  appointed  from  among  the  chief  tenants 
of  the  county,  and  no  undue  fees  were  to  be  exacted  for  the 
administration  of  justice  in  their  court. 

A  royal  proclamation  in  the  English  tongue,  the  first  in 
that  tongue  since  the  Conquest  which  has  reached  us,  ordered 
the  observance  of  these  Provisions.  Resistance  came  only 
from  the  foreign  favorites,  and  an  armed  .administration 
drove  them  in  flight  over  sea.  The  whole  royal  power  was 
now  in  fact  in  the  hands  of  the  committees  appointed  by  the 
Great  Council ;  and  the  policy  of  the  administration  was  seen 
in  the  prohibitions  against  any  further  payments,  secular  or 
ecclesiastical,  to  Rome,  in  the  formal  withdrawal  from  the 
Sicilian  enterprise,  in  the  negotiations  conducted  by  Earl 
Simon  with  France,  which  finally  ended  in  the  absolute  re- 
nunciation of  Henry's  title  to  his  lost  provinces,  and  in  the 
peace  which  put  an  end  to  the  incursions  of  the  Welsh. 
Within,  however,  the  measures  of  the  barons  were  feeble  and 
selfish.  The  Provisions  of  Westminster,  published  by  them 
under  popular  pressure  in  the  following  year,  for  the  protec- 
tion of  tenants  and  furtherance  of  justice,  brought  little 
fruit ;  and  a  tendency  to  mere  feudal  privilege  showed  itself 
in  an  exemption  of  all  nobles  and  prelates  from  attendance 
at  the  sheriff's  courts.  It  was  in  vain  that  Earl  Simon 
returned  from  his  negotiations  in  France  to  press  for  more 
earnest  measures  of  reform,  or  that  the  king's  son  Edward 
remained  faithful  to  his  oath  to  observe  the  Provisions,  and 
openly  supported  him.  Gloucester  and  Hugh  Bigod,  faith- 
less to  the  cause  of  reform,  drew  with  the  feudal  party  to  the 


THE  BARONS'  WAR.     1258  TO  1265. 

gide  of  the  king ;  and  Henry,  procuring  from  the  Pope  a 
bull  which  annulled  the  Provisions  and  freed  him  from  his 
oath  to  observe  them,  regained  possession  of  the  Tower  and 
the  other  castles,  appointed  a  new  Justiciar,  and  restored  the 
old  authority  of  the  crown. 

Deserted  as  he  was,  the  Earl  of  Leicester  was  forced  to 
withdraw  for  eighteen  months  to  France,  while  Henry  ruled 
in  open  defiance  of  the  Provisions.  The  con-  struggle 
fusion  of  the  realm  renewed  the  disgust  at  his  with  the 
government ;  and  the  death  of  Gloucester  re-  Crown, 
moved  the  one  barrier  to  action.  In  1263  Simon  landed 
again  as  the  unquestioned  head  of  the  baronial  party.  The 
march  of  Edward  with  a  royal  army  against  Llewelyn  of 
Wales  was  viewed  by  the  barons  as  a  prelude  to  hostilities 
against  themselves  ;  and  Earl  Simon  at  once  swept  the  Welsh 
border,  marched  on  Dover,  and  finally  appeared  before  Lon- 
don. His  power  was  strengthened  by  the  attitude  of  the 
towns.  The  new  democratic  spirit  which  we  have  witnessed 
in  the  Friars  was  now  stirring  the  purely  industrial  classes 
to  assert  a  share  in  the  municipal  administration,  which  had 
hitherto  been  confined  to  the  wealthier  members  of  the 
merchant  gilds,  and  at  London  and  elsewhere  a  revolution, 
which  will  be  described  at  greater  length  hereafter^  had 
thrown  the  government  of  the  city  into  the  hands  of  the 
lower  citizens.  The  "  Communes,"  as  the  new  city  govern- 
ments were  called,  showed  an  enthusiastic  devotion  to  Earl 
Simon  and  his  cause.  The  queen  was  stopped  in  her  at- 
tempt to  escape  from  the  Tower  by  an  angry  mob,  who  drove 
her  back  with  stones  and  foul  words.  When  Henry  at- 
tempted to  surprise  Leicester  in  his  quarters  in  Southwark, 
the  Londoners  burst  the  gates  which  had  been  locked  by  the 
richer  burghers  against  him,  and  rescued  him  by  a  welcome 
into  the  city.  The  clergy  and  Universities  went  in  sympathy 
with  the  towns,  and  in  spite  of  the  taunts  of  the  royalists, 
who  accused  him  of  seeking  allies  against  the  nobility  in  the 
common  people,  the  popular  enthusiasm  gave  a  strength  to 
Earl  Simon  which  enabled  him  to  withstand  the  severest 
blow  which  had  yet  been  dealt  to  his  cause.  The  nobles 
drew  to  the  king.  The  dread  of  civil  war  gave  strength  to 
the  cry  for  compromise,  and  it  was  agreed  that  the  strife 
should  be  left  to  the  arbitration  of  Lewis  the  Ninth  of 


HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

France.  In  the  Mise  of  Amiens  Lewis  gave  his  verdict 
wholly  in  favor  of  the  king.  The  Provisions  of  Oxford  were 
annulled.  Only  the  charters  granted  before  the  Provisions 
were  to  be  observed.  The  appointment  and  removal  of  all 
officers  of  state  was  to  be  wholly  with  the  king,  and  he  was 
suffered  to  call  aliens  to  his 'councils.  The  blow  was  a  hard 
one.  and  the  decision  of  Lewis  was  at  once  confirmed  by  the 
Pope.  The  barons  felt  themselves  bound  by  the  award  ;  only 
the  exclusion  of  aliens — a  point  which  they  had  not  pur- 
posed to  submit  to  arbitration — they  refused  to  concede. 
Simon  at  once  resolved  on  resistance.  Luckily,  the  French 
award  had  reserved  the  rights  of  Englishmen  to  the  liberties 
they  had  enjoyed  before  the  Provisions  of  Oxford,  and  it 
was  easy  for  Simon  to  prove  that  the  arbitrary  power  it  gave 
to  the  crown  was  as  contrary  to  the  Charter  as  to  the  Pro- 
visions themselves.  London  was  the  first  to  reject  the  decis- 
ion ;  its  citizens  mustered  at  the  call  of  the  town-bell  at 
Saint  Paul's,  seized  the  royal  officials,  and  plundered  the 
royal  parks.  But  an  army  had  already  mustered  in  great 
force  at  the  king's  summons,  and  Leicester  found  himself 
deserted  by  baron  after  baron.  Every  day  brought  news  ot 
ill.  A  detachment  from  Scotland  joined  Henry's  forces. 
The  younger  De  Montfort  was  taken  prisoner.  Northampton 
was  captured,  the  king  raised  the  seige  of  Eochester,  and  a 
rapid  march  of  Earl  Simon's  only  saved  London  itself  from 
a  surprise  by  Edward.  Betrayed  as  he  was,  the  Earl  re- 
mained firm  to  the  cause.  He  would  fight  to  the  end,  he 
said,  even  were  he  and  his  sons  left  to  fight  alone.  With  an 
army  reinforced  by  15,000  Londoners,  he  marched  to  the  re- 
lief of  the  Cinque  Ports,  which  were  now  threatened  by  the 
king.  Even  on  the  march  he  was  forsaken  by  many  of  the 
nobles  who  followed  him.  Halting  atFletching  in  Sussex,  a 
few  miles  from  Lewes,  where  the  royal  army  was  encamped, 
Earl  Simon  with  the  young  Earl  of  Gloucester  offered  the 
king  compensation  for  all  damage  if  he  would  observe  the 
Provisions.  Henry's  answer  was  one  of  defiance,  and  though 
numbers  were  against  him  the  Earl  resolved  on  battle.  His 
skill  as  a  soldier  reversed  the  advantages  of  the  ground ; 
inarching  at  dawn  he  seized  the  heights  eastward  of  the 
town,  and  moved  down  these  slopes  to  an  attack.  His  men, 
with  white  crosses  on  back  and  breast,  knelt  in  prayer  before 


THE  BARONS'  WAR.    1258  TO  1265.  199 

the  battle  opened.  Edward  was  the  first  to  open  the  fight ; 
his  furious  charge  broke  the  Londoners  on  Leicester's  left, 
and  in  the  bitterness  of  his  hatred  he  pursued  them  for  four 
miles,  slaughtering  three  thousand  men.  He  returned  to 
find  the  battle  lost.  Crowded  in  the  narrow  space  with  a 
river  in  their  rear  ;  the  royalist  center  and  left  were  crushed 
by  Earl  Simon  ;  the  Earl  of  Cornwall,  now  King  of  the 
Romans,  who,  as  the  mocking  song  of  the  victors  ran, 
"  makede  him  a  castel  of  mulne  post "  ("he  weened  that  the 
mill-sails  were  mangonels"  goes  on  the  sarcastic  verse),  was 
made  prisoner,  and  Henry  himself  captured.  Edward  cut 
his  way  into  the  Priory  only  to  join  in  his  father's  surrender. 
The  victory  of  Lewes  placed  Earl  Simon  at  the  head  of  the 
state.  "  Now  England  breathes  in  tlie  hope  of  liberty,"  sang 
a  poet  of  the  time  ;  "  the  English  were  despised 
like  dogs,  but  now  they  have  lifted  up  their  head 
and  their  foes  are  vanquished."  The  song  an- 
nounces with  almost  legal  precision  the  theory  of  the  patriots. 
"  He  who  would  be  in  truth  a  king,  he  is  a  'free  king*  in- 
deed if  he  rightly  rule  himself  and  his  realm.  All  things  are 
lawful  to  him  for  the  government  of  his  kingdom,  but  noth- 
ing for  its  destruction.  It  is  one  thing  to  rule  according  to 
a  king's  duty,  another  to  destroy  a  kingdom  by  resisting  the 
law."  ''Let  the  community  of  the  realm  advise,  and  let  it 
be  known  what  the  generality,  to  whom  their  own  laws  are 
best  known,  think  on  the  matter.  They  who  are  ruled  by 
the  laws  know  those  laws  best,  they  who  make  daily  trial  of 
them  are  best  acquainted  with  them  ;  and  since  it  is  their 
own  affairs  which  are  at  stake,  they  will  take  more  care,  and 
will  act  with  an  eye  to  their  own  peace."  "  It  concerns  the 
community  to  see  what  sort  of  men  ought  justly  to  be  chosen 
for  the  weal  of  the  realm."  The  constitutional  restrictions 
on  the  royal  authority,'  the  right  of  the  whole  nation  to  delib- 
erate and  decide  on  its  own  affairs,  and  to  have  a  voice  in  the 
selection  of  the  administrators  of  government,  had  never  been 
so  clearly  stated  before.  But  the  moderation  of  the  terms 
agreed  upon  in  the  Mise  of  Lewes,  a  convention  between  the 
king  and  his  captors,  shows  Simon's  sense  of  the  difficulties 
of  his  position.  The  question  of  the  Provisions  was  again  to 
be  submitted  to  arbitration  ;  and  a  parliament  in  June,  to 
which  four  knights  were  summoned  from  every  county, 


200  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

placed  the  administration  till  this  arbitration  was  complete 
in  the  hands  of  a  new  council  of  nine,  to  be  nominated  by 
the  Earls  of  Leicester  and  Gloucester  and  the  patriotic  Bishop 
of  Chichester.  Responsibility  to  the  community  was  pro- 
vided for  by  the  declaration  of  a  right  in  the  body  of  barons 
and  prelates  to  remove  either  of  the  Three  Electors,  who  in 
turn  could  displace  or  appoint  the  members  of  the  Council. 
Such  a  constitution  was  of  a  different  order  from  the  cum- 
brous and  oligarchical  Committees  of  1258.  But  the  plans 
for  arbitration  broke  down,  Lewis  refused  to  review  his  deci- 
sion, and  the  Pope  formally  condemned  the  barons'  cause. 
The  Earl's  difficulties  thickened  every  day.  The  queen 
gathered  an  army  in  France  for  an  invasion,  and  the  barons 
on  the  Welsh  border  were  still  in  arms.  It  was  impossible 
to  make  binding  terms  with  an  imprisoned  king,  yet  to  re- 
lease Henry  without  terms  was  to  renew  the  war.  A  new 
parliament  was  summoned  in  January,  1265,  to  Westminster, 
but  the  weakness  ,of  the  patriotic  party  among  the  baronage 
was  shown  in  the  fact  that  only  twenty-three  earls  and  barons 
could  be  found  to  sit  beside  the  hundred  and  twenty  ecclesi- 
astics. But  it  was  just  this  sense  of  his  weakness  that  drove 
Earl  Simon  to  a  constitutional  change  of  mighty  issue  in  our 
history.  As  before,  he  summoned  two  knights  from  every 
county.  But  he  created  a  new  force  in  English  politics  when 
he  summoned  to  sit  beside  them  two  citizens  from  every 
borough.  The  attendance  of  delegates  from  the  towns  had 
long  been  usual  in  the  county  courts  when  any  matter  re- 
specting their  interests  was  in  question  ;  but  it  was  the  writ 
issued  by  Earl  Simon  that  first  summoned  the  merchant  and 
the  trader  to  sit  beside  the  knight  of  the  shire,  the  baron, 
and  the  bishop  in  the  parliament  of  the  realm. 

It  is  only  this  great  event  however  which  enables  us  to  un- 
derstand the  large  and  prescient  nature  of  Earl  Simon's  de- 
signs.    Hardly  a  few  months  had  passed  since  the 
iSrl  Simon    vic^orJ  °^  Lewes,  and  already,  when  the  burghers 
took  their    seats  at  Westminster,  his  government 
was  tottering  to  its  fall.     Dangers  from  without  the  Earl  had 
met  with  complete  success  ;  a  general  muster  of  the  national 
forces  on  Barham  Down  put  an  end  to  the  projects  of  inva- 
sion  entertained  by  the  mercenaries  whom  the  queen  had 
collected  in  Flanders  ;  the  threats  of  France  died  away  into 


THE  BARONS'  WAR.    1258  TO  1265.  201 

negotiations  ;  the  Papal  Legate  was  forbidden  to  cross  the 
Channel,  and  his  bulls  of  excommunication  were  flung  into 
the  sea.  But  the  difficulties  at  home  grew  more  formidable 
every  day.  The  restraint  upon  Henry  and  Edward  jarred 
against  the  national  feeling  of  loyalty,  and  estranged  the  mass 
of  Englishmen  who  always  side  with  the  weak.  Small  as  the 
patriotic  party  among  the  barons  had  always  been,  it  grew 
smaller  as  dissensions  broke  out  over  the  spoils  of  victory. 
The  Earl's  justice  and  resolve  to  secure  the  public  peace  told 
heavily  against  him.  John  Giffard  left  him  because  he  refused 
to  allow  him  to  exact  ransom  from  a  prisoner  contrary  to  the 
agreement  made  after  Lewes.  The  young  Earl  Gilbert  of 
Gloucester,  though  enriched  with  the  estates  of  the  for- 
eigners, resented  Leicester's  prohibition  of  a  tournament,  his 
naming  the  wardens  of  the  royal  castles  by  his  own  authority, 
and  his  holding  Edward's  fortresses  on  the  Welsh  marches  by 
his  own  garrisons.  Gloucester's  later  conduct  proves  the  wis- 
dom of  Leicester's  precautions.  In  the  spring  Parliament  of 
1265  he  openly  charged  the  Earl  with  violating  the  Mise  of 
Lewes,  with  tyranny,  and  with  aiming  at  the  crown.  Before 
its  close  he  withdrew  to  his  own  lands  in  the  west,  and  se- 
cretly allied  himself  with  Koger  Mortimer  and  the  Marcher 
barons.  Earl  Simon  soon  followed  him  to  the  west,  taking 
with  him  the  king  and  Edward.  He  moved  along  the  Sev- 
ern, securing  its  towns,  advanced  westward  to  Hereford,  and 
was  marching  at  the  end  of  June  along  bad  roads  into  the 
heart  of  South  Wales  to  attack  the  fortresses  of  Earl  Gilbert 
in  Glamorgan  when  Edward  suddenly  made  his  escape  from 
Hereford  and  joined  Gloucester  at  Ludlow.  The  moment 
had  been  skilfully  chosen,  and  Edward  showed  a  rare  ability 
in  the  movements  by  which  he  took  advantage  of  the  Earl's 
position.  Moving  rapidly  along  the  Severn  he  seized  Glou- 
cester and  the  bridges  across  the  river,  destroyed  the  ships  by 
which  Leicester  strove  to  escape  across  the  Channel  to  Bristol, 
and  cut  him  off  altogether  from  England.  By  this  move- 
ment too  he  placed  himself  between  the  Earl  and  his  son 
Simon,  who  was  advancing  from  the  east  to  his  father's 
relief.  Turning  rapidly  on  this  second  force  Edward  sur- 
prised it  at  Kenilworth  and  drove  it  with  heavy  loss  within 
the  walls  of  the  castle.  But  the  success  was  more  than  com- 
pensated by  the  opportunity  which  his  absence  gave  to  the 


202  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Earl  of  breaking  the  line  of  the  Severn.  Taken  by  surprise 
and  isolated  as  he  was,  Simon  had  been  forced  to  seek  for 
aid  and  troops  in  an  avowed  alliance  with  Llewelyn,  and  it 
was  with  Welsh  reinforcements  that  he  turned  to  the  east. 
But  the  seizure  of  his  ships  and  of  the  bridges  of  the  Severn 
held  him  a  prisoner  in  Edward's  grasp,  and  a  fierce  attack 
drove  him  back,  with  broken  and  starving  forces,  into  the 
Welsh  hills.  In  utter  despair  he  struck  northward  to  Here- 
ford ;  but  the  absence  of  Edward  now  enabled  him  on  the 
3d  of  August  to  throw  his  troops  in  boats  across  the  Severn 
below  Worcester.  The  news  drew  Edward  quickly  back  in 
a  fruitless  counter-march  to  the  river,  for  the  Earl  had  already 
reached  Evesham  by  a  long  night  march  on  the  morning  of 
the  4th,  while  his  son,  relieved  in  turn  by  Edward's  counter- 
march, had  pushed  in  the  same  night  to  the  little  town  of  Al- 
cester.  The  two  armies  were  now  but  some  ten  miles  apart, 
and  their  junction  seemed  secured.  But  both  were  spent 
with  long  marching,  and  while  the  Earl,  listening  reluctantly 
to  the  request  of  the  king,  who  accompanied  him,  halted  at 
Evesham  for  mass  and  dinner,  the  army  of  the  younger  Simon 
halted  for  the  same  purpose  at  Alcester. 

"  Those  two  dinners  doleful  were,  alas  ! "  sings  Kobert 
of  Gloucester  ;  for  through  the  same  memorable  night 
Edward  was  hurrying  back  from  the  Severn  by 
conntry  cross  lanes  to  seize  the  fatal  gap  that 
lay  between  them.  As  morning  broke  his  army 
lay  across  the  road  that  led  northward  from  Evesham  to 
Alcester.  Evesham  lies  in  a  loop  of  the  river  Avon  where 
it  bends  to  the  south  ;  and  a  height  on  which  Edward 
ranged  his  troops  closed  the  one  outlet  from  it  save  across 
the  river.  But  a  force  had  been  thrown  over  the  river  under 
Mortimer  to  seize  the  bridges,  and  all  retreat  was  thus 
finally  cut  off.  The  approach  of  Edward's  army  called 
Simon  to  the  front,  and  for  the  moment  he  took  it  for  his 
son's.  Though  the  hope  soon  died  away  a  touch  of  soldierly 
pride  moved  him  as  he  recognized  in  the  orderly  advance  of 
his  enemies  a  proof  of  his  own  training.  "  By  the  arm  of 
St.  James,"  he  cried,  "they  come  on  in  wise  fashion,  but  it 
was  from  me  that  they  learnt  it."  A  glance  however  satisfied 
him  of  the  hopelessness  of  a  struggle  ;  it  was  impossible  for 
a  handful  of  horsemen  with  a  mob  of  half-armed  Welshmen 


THE  BARONS'  WAR.    1258  TO  1265.  203 

to  resist  the  disciplined  knighthood  of  the  royal  army.  "  Let 
us  commend  our  souls  to  God,"  Simon  said  to  the  little 
group  around  him,  "  for  our  bodies  are  the  foe's."  He  bade 
Hugh  Despenser  and  the  rest  of  his  comrades  fly  from  the 
field.  "If  he  died,"  was  the  noble  answer,  "they  had  no 
will  to  live."  In  three  hours  the  butchery  was  over.  The 
Welsh  fled  at  the  first  onset  like  sheep,  and  were  cut  ruth- 
lessly down  in  the  cornfields  and  gardens  where  they  sought 
refuge.  The  little  group  of  knights  around  Simon  fought 
desperately,  falling  one  by  one  till  the  earl  was  left  alone. 
So  terrible  were  his  sword-strokes  that  he  had  all  but  gained 
the  hill-top  when  a  lance-thrust  brought  his  horse  to  the 
ground,  but  Simon  still  rejected  the  summons  to  yield,  till 
a  blow  from  behind  felled  him,  mortally  wounded,  to  the 
ground.  Then  with  a  last  cry  of  "It  is  God's  grace "  the 
soul  of  the  great  patriot  passed  away. 


204  HJLSTOKY   OF   THJS  KNUL1SH 


CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  THREE  EDWARDS. 

1265—1360. 
Section  I.— The  Conquest  of  Wales.    1265—1284. 

[Authorities.— For  the  general  state  of  Wales,  see  the  "  Itinerarium  Cambriae  " 
of  Qiraldus  Camhrensis  :  for  its  general  history,  the  "  Brut-y-Ty\vysogion,"  and 
"Annales  Cambriae,"  published  by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls;  the  Chronicle  of 
Caradoc  of  Lancarvan,  as  given  in  the  translation  by  Powel ;  and  Warrington's 
"History  of  Wales."  Stephen's  "Literature  of  the  Cymry  "  affords  a  general 
view  of  Welsh  poetry  ;  the  "  Mabinogion  "  have  been  published  by  lady  Charlotte 
Guest.  In  his  essays  on  "  The  study  of  Celtic  Literature,"  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  has 
admirably  illustrated  the  characteristics  of  the  Welsh  Poetry.  For  English  affairs 
the  monastic  annals  we  have  before  mentioned  are  supplemented  by  the  jejune 
entries  of  Trivet  and  Murimuth.] 

WHILE  literature  and  science  after  a  brief  outburst  were 
crushed  in  England  by  the  turmoil  of  the  Barons'  War,  a 
poetic  revival  had  brought  into  sharp  contrast  the  social  and 
intellectual  condition  of  Wales. 

To  all  outer  seeming  Wales  had  in  the  thirteenth  century 
become  utterly  barbarous.  Stripped  of  every  vestige  of  the 
older  Roman  civilization  by  ages  of  bitter  warfare, 
Literature  or  civil  strife,  or  estrangement  from  thegeneral  cult- 
ure of  Christendom,  the  unconquered  Britons  had 
sunk  into  a  mass  of  savage  herdsmen,  clad  in  the  skins  and  fed 
by  the  milk  of  the  cattle  they  tended,  faithless,  greedy,  and 
revengeful  retaining  no  higher  political  organization  than  that 
of  the  clan,  broken  by  ruthless  feuds,  united  only  in  battle  cr 
in  raid  against  the  stranger.  But  in  the  heart  of  the  wild 
people  there  still  lingered  a  spark  of  the  poetic  fire  which  had 
nerved  it  four  hundred  years  before,  through  Aneurin  and 
Llywarch  Hen,  to  its  struggle  with  the  Saxon.  At  the  hour 
of  its  lowest  degradation  the  silence  of  Wales  was  suddenly 
broken  by  a  crowd  of  singers.  The  song  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury burst  forth,  not  from  one  bard  or  another,  but  from  the 
nation  at  large.  "  In  every  house,"  says  the  shrewd  Gerald 
de  Barri,  "strangers  who  arrived  in  the  morning  were  en- 


TtLE   CONQUEST    OF    WALKS.       1265    TO    1284.  205 

tertained  till  eventide  with  the  talk  of  maidens  and  the  music 
of  the  harp."  The  romantic  literature  of  the  race  found  an 
admirable  means  of  utterance  in  its  tongue,  as  real  a  develop- 
ment of  the  old  Celtic  language  heard  by  Caesar  as  the  Ro- 
mance tongues  are  developments  of  Caesar's  Latin,  but  which 
at  afar  earlier  date  than  any  other  language  of  modern  Europe 
had  attained  to  definite  structure  and  to  settled  literary  form. 
No  other  medieval  literature  shows  at  its  outset  the  same  elab- 
orate and  completed  organization  as  that  of  the  Welsh.  But 
within  these  settled  forms  the  Celtic  fancy  plays  with  a  startling 
freedom.  In  one  of  the  later  poems  Gwion  the  Little  trans- 
forms himself  into  a  hare,  a  fish,  a  bird,  a  grain  of  wheat ; 
but  he  is  only  the  symbol  of  the  strange  shapes  in  which  the 
Celtic  fancy  embodies  itself  in  the  tales  or  "Mabinogion" 
which  reached  their  highest  perfection  in  the  legends  of 
Arthur.  Its  gay  extravagance  flings  defiance  to  all  fact, 
tradition,  probability,  and  revels  in  the  impossible  and  un- 
real. When  Arthur  sails  into  the  unknown  world,  it  is  in  a 
ship  of  glass.  The  "descent  into  hell,"  as  a  Celtic  poet 
paints  it,  shakes  off  the  medieval  horror  with  the  medieval 
reverence,  and  the  knight  who  achieves  the  quest  spends  his 
years  of  infernal  durance  in  hunting  and  minstrelsy,  and  in 
converse  with  fair  women.  The  world  of  the  Mabinogiou  is 
a  world  of  pure  fantasy,  a  new  earth  of  marvels  and  en- 
chantments, of  dark  forests  whose  silence  is  broken  by  the 
hermit's  bell,  and  sunny  glades  where  the  light  plays  on  the 
hero's  armor.  Each  figure  as  it  moves  across  the  poet's  can- 
vas is  bright  with  glancing  color.  "  The  maiden  was  clothed 
in  a  robe  of  flame-colored  silk,  and  about  her  neck  was  a 
collar  of  ruddy  gold  in  which  were  precious  emeralds  and 
rubies.  Her  head  was  of  brighter  gold  than  the  flower  of 
the  broom,  her  skin  was  whiter  than  the  foam  of  the  wave, 
and  fairer  were  her  hands  and  her  fingers  than  the  blossoms 
of  the  wood-anemone  amidst  the  spray  of  the  meadow  foun- 
tain. The  eye  of  the  trained  hawk,  the  glance  of  the  falcon, 
was  not  brighter  than  hers.  Her  bosom  was  more  snowy 
than  the  breast  of  the  white  swan,  her  cheek  was  redder  than 
the  reddest  roses."  Everywhere  there  is  an  Oriental  profu- 
sion of  gorgeous  imagery,  but  the  gorgeousness  is  seldom  op- 
pressive. The  sensibility  of  the  Celtic  temper,  so  quick  to 
perceive  beauty,  so  eager  in  its  thirst  for  life,  its  emotions. 


206  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

its  adventures,  its  sorrows,  its  joys,  is  tempered  by  a  passion- 
ate melancholy  that  expresses  its  revolt  against  the  impos- 
sible, by  an  instinct  of  what  is  noble,  by  a  sentiment  that  dis- 
covers the  weird  charm  of  nature.  Some  graceful  play  of 
pure  fancy,  some  tender  note  of  feeling,  some  magical  touch 
of  beauty,  relieves  its  wildest  extravagance.  As  Kalweh's 
greyhounds  bound  from  side  to  side  of  their  master's  steed, 
they  "  sport  round  him  like  two  sea-swallows."  His  spear 
is  "  swifter  than  the  fall  of  the  dewdrop  from  the  blade  of 
reed-grass  upon  the  earth  when  the  dew  of  June  is  at  the 
heaviest."  A  subtle,  observant  love  of  nature  and  natural 
beauty  takes  fresh  color  from  the  passionate  human  senti- 
ment with  which  it  is  imbued,  sentiment  which  breaks  out 
in  Gwalchmai's  cry  of  nature-love,  "  I  love  the  birds  and 
their  sweet  voices  in  the  lulling  songs  of  the  wood,"  in  his 
watches  at  night  beside  the  fords  "  among  the  untrodden 
grass"  to  hear  the  nightingale  and  watch  the  play  of  the  sea- 
mew.  Even  patriotism  takes  the  same  picturesque  form  ;  the 
Welsh  poet  hates  the  flat  and  sluggish  land  of  the  Saxon  ;  as 
he  dwells  on  his  own,  he  tells  of  "  its  sea-coast  and  its 
mountains,  its  towns  on  the  forest  border,  its  fair  landscape, 
its  dales,  its  waters,  and  its  valleys,  its  white  sea-mews,  its 
beauteous  women."  But  the  song  passes  swiftly  and  subtly 
into  a  world  of  romantic  sentiment :  "  I  love  its  fields  clothed 
with  tender  trefoil,  I  love  the  marches  of  Merioneth  where 
my  head  was  pillowed  on  a  snow-white  arm."  In  the  Celtic 
love  of  woman  there  is  little  of  the  Teutonic  depth  and  ear- 
nestness, but  in  its  stead  a  childlike  spirit  of  delicate  enjoy- 
ment, a  faint  distant  flush  of  passion  like  the  rose-light  of 
dawn  on  a  snowy  mountain  peak,  a  playful  delight  in  beauty. 
"White  is  my  love  as  the  apple  blossom,  as  the  ocean's 
spray ;  her  face  shines  like  the  pearly  dew  on  Eryri ;  the 
glow  of  her  cheeks  is  like  the  light  of  sunset."  The  buoyant 
and  elastic  temper  of  the  French  trouvere  was  spiritualized  in 
the  Welsh  singers  by  a  more  refined  poetic  feeling.  "  Whoso 
beheld  her  was  filled  with  her  love.  Four  white  trefoils 
sprang  up  wherever  she  trod."  The  touch  of  pure  fancy 
removes  its  object  out  of  the  sphere  of  passion  into  one  of 
delight  and  reverence. 

It  is  strange,  as  we  have  said,  to  pass  from  the  world  of 
actual  Welsh  history  into  such  a  world  swj  this.     But  side  bv 


THE   CONQUEST    OF    WALES.      1266    TO   1284.  207 

Bide  with  this  wayward,  fanciful  stream  of  poesy  and  romance 
ran  a  torrent  of  intenser  song.  The  old  spirit  of  the  earlier 
bards,  their  joy  in  battle,  their  love  for  freedom,  their  hatred 
of  the  Saxon,  broke  out  in  ode  after  ode,  in  songs  extrava- 
gant, monotonous,  often  prosaic,  but  fused  into  poetry  by 
the  intense  fire  of  patriotism  which  glowed  within  them. 
The  rise  of  the  new  poetic  feeling  indeed  marked  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  new  energy  in  the  long  struggle  with  the 
English  conqueror. 

Of  the  three  Welsh  states  into  which  all  that  remained  un- 
conquered  of  Britain  had  been  broken  by  the  victories  of  Deor- 
ham  and  Chester,  two  had  long  ceased  to  exist.  England 
The  country  between  the  Clyde  and  the  Dee  had  and  the 
been  gradually  absorbed  by  the  conquests  of  North-  Welsh- 
nmbria  and  the  growth  of  the  Scot  monarchy.  West  Wales, 
between  the  British  Channel  and  the  eatuary  of  the  Severn, 
had  yielded  to  the  sword  of  Ecgberht.  But  a  fiercer  resistance 
prolonged  the  independence  of  the  great  central  portion  which 
alone  in  modern  language  preserves  the  name  of  Wales.  In 
itself  the  largest  and  most  powerful  of  the  British  states,  it  was 
aided  in  its  struggle  against  Merciaby  the  weakness  of  its  as- 
sailant, the  youngest  and  least  powerful  of  the  English  states, 
as  well  as  by  the  internal  warfare  which  distracted  the  energies 
of  the  invaders.  But  Mercia  had  no  sooner  risen  to  supremacy 
among  the  English  kingdoms  than  it  took  the  work  of  con- 
quest vigorously  in  hand.  Offa  tore  from  Wales  the  border 
land  between  the  Severn  and  the  Wye  ;  the  raids  of  his  suc- 
cessors carried  fire  and  sword  into  the  heart  of  the  country ; 
and  an  acknowledgment  of  the  Mercian  overlordship  was 
wrested  from  the  Welsh  princes.  On  the  fall  of  Mercia 
this  passed  to  the  West-Saxon  kings.  The  Laws  of  Howel 
Dda  own  the  payment  of  a  yearly  tribute  by  "  the  prince 
of  Aberffraw  "  to  "the  King  of  London."  The  weakness 
of  England  during  her  long  struggle  with  the  Danes  re- 
vived the  hopes  of  British  independence.  But  with  the  fall 
of  the  Danelaw  the  Welsh  princes  were  again  brought  to  sub- 
mission, and  when  in  the  midst  of  the  Confessor's  reign  the 
Welsh  seized  on  a  quarrel  between  the  houses  of  Leofric  and 
Godwine  to  cross  the  border  and  carry  their  attacks  into  Eng- 
land itself,  the  victories  of  Harold  reasserted  the  English 
supremacy.  His  li^ht-armed  troops  disembarking  on  the 


208  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

coast  penetrated  to  the  heart  of  the  mountains,  and  the  suc- 
cessors of  the  Welsh  prince  Gruffydd,  whose  head  was  the 
trophy  of  the  campaign,  swore  to  observe  the  old  fealty  and 
render  the  old  tribute  to  the  English  crown. 

A  far  more  desperate  struggle  began  when  the  wave  of  Nor- 
man conquest  broke  on  the  Welsh  frontier.  A  chain  of  great 
The  Con-  earldoms,  settled  by  William  along  the  border- 
quest  of  land,  at  once  bridled  the  old  marauding  forays. 
South  Wales.  prom  fas  county  palatine  of  Chester,  Hugh  the 
Wolf  harried  Flintshire  into  a  desert ;  Eobert  of  Belesme,  in 
his  earldom  of  Shrewsbury,  "  slew  the  Welsh,"  says  a  chron- 
icler, "like  sheep,  conquered  them,  enslaved  them,  and 
flayed  them  with  nails  of  iron."  Backed  by  these  greater 
baronies  a  horde  of  lesser  adventurers  obtained  the  royal  "  li- 
cense to  make  conquest  of  the  Welsh."  Monmouth  and  Aber- 
gavenny  were  seized  and  guarded  by  Norman  castellans ; 
Bernard  of  Neufmarche  won  the  lordship  of  Brecknock  ; 
Eoger  of  Montgomery  raised  the  town  and  fortress  in  Powys- 
land  which  still  preserves  his  name.  A  great  rising  of  the 
whole  people  in  the  days  of  the  second  William  at  last  recov- 
ered some  of  this  Norman  spoil.  The  new  castle  of  Mont- 
gomery was  burned,  Brecknock  and  Cardigan  were  cleared 
of  the  invaders,  and  the  Welsh  poured  ravaging  over  the 
English  border.  Twice  the  Red  King  carried  his  arms  fruit- 
lessly among  the  mountains,  against  enemies  who  took  ref- 
uge in  their  fastnesses  till  famine  and  hardship  had  driven 
his  broken  host  into  retreat.  The  wiser  policy  of  Henry  the 
First  fell  back  on  his  father's  system  of  gradual  conquest, 
and  a  new  tide  of  invasion  flowed  along  the  coast,  where  the 
land  was  level  and  open  and  accessible  from  the  sea.  The  at- 
tack was  aided  by  internal  strife.  Robert  Fitz-Hamo,  the 
lord  of  Gloucester,  was  summoned  to  his  aid  by  a  Welsh 
chieftain  ;  and  the  defeat  of  Rhys  ap  Tewdor,  the  last  prince 
under  whom  Southern  Wales  was  united,  produced  an  an- 
archy which  enabled  Robert  to  land  safely  on  the  coast  of 
Glamorgan,  to  conquer  the  country  round,  and  to  divide  it 
among  his  soldiers.  A  force  of  Flemings  and  Englishmen 
followed  the  Earl  of  Clare  as  he  landed  near  Milford  Haven, 
and  pushing  back  the  British  inhabitants  settled  a  "  Little 
England  "  in  the  present  Pembrokeshire.  A  few  daring  ad- 
venturers accompanied  the  Norman  Lord  of  Kemeys  into 


THE    CONQUEST   OF   WALES.      12(55   TO   1284.  209 

Cardigan,  where  land  might  be  had  for  the  winning  by  any 
01  e  who  would  "  wage  war  on  the  Welsh." 

It  was  at  this  moment,  when  the  utter  subjugation  of  the 
British  race  seemed  at  hand,  that  a  new  outburst  of  energy 
rolled  back  the  tide  of  invasion  and  changed  the  fit- 
ful resistance  of  the  separate  Welsh  provinces  into  £gvivg 
a  national  effort  to  regain  independence.  A  new 
poetic  fire,  as  we  have  seen,  sprang  into  life.  Every  fight, 
every  hero,  had  suddenly  its  verse.  The  names  of  the  older 
bards  were  revived  in  bold  forgeries  to  animate  the  national 
resistance  and  to  prophesy  victory.  It  was  in  North  Wales  that 
the  new  spirit  of  patriotism  received  its  strongest  inspiration 
from  this  burst  of  song.  Again  and  again  Henry  the  Second 
was  driven  to  retreat  from  the  impregnable  fastnesses  where  the 
"  Lords  of  Snowdon,"  the  princes  of  the  house  of  Gruffydd 
ap  Conan,  claimed  supremacy  over  Wales.  Once  a  cry  arose 
that  the  king  was  slain,  Henry  of  Essex  flung  down  the  royal 
standard,  and  the  king's  desperate  efforts  could  hardly  save 
his  army  from  utter  rout.  In  a  later  campaign  the  invaders 
were  met  by  storms  of  rain,  and  forced  to  abandon  their  bag- 
gage in  a  headlong  flight  to  Chester.  The  greatest  of  the 
Welsh  odes,  that  known  to  English  readers  in  Gray's  trans- 
lation as  "  The  Triumph  of  Owen,"  is  Gwalchmai's  song  of 
victory  over  the  repulse  of  an  English  fleet  from  Abermenai. 
The  long  reigns  of  the  two  Llewelyns,  the  sons  of  Jorwerth  and 
of  Gruffydd,  which  all  but  cover  the  last  century  of  Welsh  in- 
dependence, seemed  destined  to  realize  the  hopes  of  their 
countrymen.  The  homage  which  the  first  succeeded  in 
extorting  from  the  whole  of  the  Welsh  chieftains  placed  him 
openly  at  the  head  of  his  race,  and  gave  a  new  character  to 
his  struggle  with  the  English  king.  In  consolidating  his 
authority  within  his  own  domains,  and  in  the  assertion  of  his 
lordship  over  the  princes  of  the  south,  Llewelyn  ap  Jorwerth 
aimed  steadily  at  securing  the  means  of  striking  off  the  yoke 
of  the  Saxon.  It  was  in  vain  that  John  strove  to  buy  his 
friendship  by  the  hand  of  his  daughter  Johanna.  Fresh  raids 
on  the  Marches  forced  the  king  to  enter  Wales  ;  but  though 
his  army  reached  Snowdon  it  fell  back  like  its  predecessors, 
starved  and  broken  before  an  enemy  it  could  never  reach. 
A  second  attack  had  better  success.  The  chieftains  of  South 
Wales  were  drawn  from  their  new  allegiance  to  join  tho 
14 


210  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

English  forces,  and  Llewelyn,  prisoned  in  his  fastnesses,  was 
at  last  driven  to  submit.  Bat  the  ink  of  the  treaty  was  hardly 
dry  before  Wales  was  again  on  fire  ;  the  common  fear  of  the 
English  once  more  united  its  chieftains,  and  the  war  between 
John  and  his  barons  removed  all  dread  of  a  new  invasion. 
Absolved  from  his  allegiance  to  an  excommunicated  king,  and 
allied  with  the  barons  under  Fitz-Walter — too  glad  to  enlist 
in  their  cause  a  prince  who  could  hold  in  check  the  nobles  of 
the  border  country,  where  the  royalist  cause  was  strongest — 
Llewelyn  seized  his  opportunity  to  reduce  Shrewsbury,  to  an- 
nex Powys,  where  the  English  influence  had  always  been 
powerful,  to  clear  the  royal  garrisons  from  Caermarthen  and 
Cardigan,  and  to  force  even  the  Flemings  of  Pembroke  to  do 
him  homage. 

The  hopes  of  Wales  rose  higher  and  higher  with  each  tri- 
umph of  the  Lord  of  Snowdon.  The  court  of  Llewelyn 
was  crowded  with  bardic  singers.  "  He  pours," 
Jorwerth  sings  one  of  them,  "his  gold  into  the  lap  of 
and  the  the  bard  as  the  ripe  fruit  falls  from  the  trees." 
Bards.  -guj.  gQ^  wag  har(jiy  needed  to  wake  their  en- 
thusiasm. Poet  after  poet  sang  of  "  the  Devastator  of  Eng- 
land/' the  "  Eagle  of  men  that  loves  not  to  lie  nor  sleep/' 
"  towering  above  the  rest  of  men  with  his  long  red  lance," 
his  "red  helmet  of  battle  crested  with  a  fierce  wolf."  "The 
sound  of  his  coming  is  like  the  roar  of  the  wave  as  it  rushes 
to  the  shore,  that  can  neither  be  stayed  nor  appeased." 
Lesser  bards  strung  together  his  victories  in  rough  jingle  of 
rhyme  and  hounded  him  on  to  the  slaughter.  "  Be  of  good 
courage  in  the  slaughter/'  sings  Elidir,  "  cling  to  thy  work, 
destroy  England,  and  plunder  its  multitudes."  A  fierce 
thirst  for  blood  runs  through  the  abrupt,  passionate  verses 
of  the  court  singers.  "  Swansea,  that  tranquil  town,  was 
broken  in  heaps,"  bursts  out  a  triumphant  poet  ;  "St.  Clears, 
with  its  bright  white  lands,  it  is  not  Saxons  who  hold  it 
now  !  "  "  In  Swansea,  the  key  of  Lloegria,  we  made  widows 
of  all  the  wives."  "The  dread  Eagle  is  wont  to  lay  corpses 
in  rows,  and  to  feast  with  the  leader  of  wolves  and  with 
hovering  ravens  glutted  with  flesh,  butchers  with  keen  scent 
of  carcases."  "  Better,"  closes  the  song,  "  is  the  grave  than 
the  life  of  man  who  sighs  when  the  horns  call  him  forth  to 
the  squares  of  battle."  But  even  in  bardic  verse  Llewelyn 


THE  CONQUEST   OF    WALES.      1265   TO   1284.        211 

rises  high  out  of  the  mere  mob  of  chieftains  who  live  by 
rapine,  and  boast  as  ttie  Hirlas-horn  passes  from  hand  to 
hand  through  the  hall  that  ''they  take  and  give  no  quarter." 
"  Tender-hearted,  wise,  witty,  ingenious,"  he  was  "  the 
great  Caesar  who  was  to  gather  beneath  his  sway  the  broken 
fragments  of  the  Celtic  race.  Mysterious  prophecies,  the 
prophecies  of  Merlin  the  Wise,  floated  from  lip  to  lip,  to 
nerve  Wales  to  its  last  struggle  with  the  invaders.  Medrawd 
and  Arthur  would  appear  once  more  on  earth  to  fight  over 
again  the  fatal  battle  of  Camlan.  The  last  conqueror  of  the  Cel- 
tic race,  Cadwallon,  still  lived  to  combat  for  his  people.  The 
supposed  verses  of  Taliesin  expressed  the  undying  hope  of  a 
restoration  of  the  Cymry.  "  In  their  hands  shall  be  all  the 
land  from  Britanny  to  Man  :  .  .  a  rumor  shall  arise  that  the 
Germans  are  moving  out  of  Britain  back  again  to  their  father- 
land." Gathered  up  in  the  strange  work  of  Geoffry  of  Mon- 
motith,  these  predictions  made  a  deep  impression,  not  on 
Wales  only,  but  on  its  conquerors.  It  was  to  meet  indeed 
the  dreams  of  a  yet  living  Arthur  that  the  grave  of  the  legen- 
dary hero-king  at  Glastonbury  was  found  and  visited  by  Henry 
the  Second.  But  neither  trick  nor  conquest  could  shake  the 
firm  faith  of  the  Celt  in  the  ultimate  victory  of  his  race. 
"  Think  you/'  said  Henry  to  a  Welsh  chieftain  who  had 
joined  his  host,  "that  your  people  of  rebels  can  withstand 
my  army  ?"  "  My  people,"  replied  the  chieftain,  "may  be 
weakened  by  our  might,  and  even  in  great  part  destroyed,  but 
unless  the  wrath  of  God  be  on  the  side  of  its  foe  it  will  not 
perish  utterly.  Xor  deem  I  that  other  race  or  other  tongue 
wi'l  answer  for  this  corner  of  the  world  before  the  Judge  of 
all  at  the  lust  d;iy  save  this  people  and  tongue  of  Wales." 
So  ran  the  popular  rhyme,  "  Their  Lord  they  will  praise, 
their  speech  they  shall  keep,  their  land  they  shall  lose — ex- 
cept wild  Wales."  Faith  and  prophecy  seemed  justified  by 
the  growing  strength  of  the  British  people.  The  weakness 
and  dissensions  which  characterized  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Third!  enabled  Llewelyn  ap  Jorwerth  to  preserve  a  practical 
independence  till  the  close  of  his  life,  when  a  fresh  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  English  supremacy  was  wrested  from  him 
by  Archbishop  Edmund.  But  the  triumphs  of  his  arms  were 
renewed  by  Llewelyn  the  son  of  Gruffydd,  whose  ravages 
swept  the  border  to  the  very  gates  of  Chester,  while  his  con- 


212  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

quest  of  Glamorgan  seemed  to  bind  the  whole  people  together 
in  a  power  strong  enough  to  meet  any  attack  from  the  stranger. 
Throughout  the  Barons'  war  Llewelyn  remained  master  of 
Wales.  Even  at  its  close  the  threat  of  an  attack  from  the  now 
united  kingdom  only  forced  him  to  submission  on  a  practical 
acknowledgment  of  his  sovereignty.  The  chieftain  whom 
the  English  kings  had  till  then  scrupulously  designated  as 
"Prince  of  Aberff  raw/'  was  now  allowed  the  title  of  "  Prince 
of  Wales,"  and  his  right  to  receive  homage  from  the  other 
nobles  of  his  principality  was  allowed. 

Near,  however,  as  Llewelyn  seemed  to  the  final  realization 
of  his  aims,  he  was  still  a  vassal  of  the  English  crown,  and 
The  Con-  ^ne  accession  of  a  new  sovereign  to  the  throne  was 
quest  of  at  once  followed  by  the  demand  of  his  homage. 
Wales.  -pjie  yOUth  Of  Edward  the  First  had  already  given 
promise  of  the  high  qualities  which  distinguished  him  as  an 
English  ruler.  The  passion  for  law,  the  instinct  of  good 
government,  which  were  to  make  his  reign  so  memorable  in 
our  history,  had  declared  themselves  from  the  first.  He  had 
sided  with  the  barons  at  the  outset  of  their  struggle  with 
Henry  ;  he  had  striven  to  keep  his  father  true  to  the  Pro- 
visions of  Oxford.  It  was  only  when  the  crown  seemed 
falling  into  bondage  that  Edward  passed  to  the  royal  side  ; 
and  when  the  danger  he  dreaded  was  over  he  returned  to  his 
older  attitude.  In  the  first  flush  of  victory,  while  the  doom 
of  Simon  was  yet  unknown,  Edward  stood  alone  in  desiring 
his  captivity  against  the  cry  of  the  Marcher  lords  for  his 
death.  When  all  was  over  he  wept  over  the  corpse  of  his 
cousin,  Henry  de  Montfort,  and  followed  the  Earl's  body  to 
the  tomb.  It  was  from  Earl  Simon,  as  the  Earl  owned  with 
a  proud  bitterness  ere  his  death,  that  Edward  had  learned 
the  skill  in  warfare  which  distinguished  him  among  the 
princes  of  his  time.  But  he  had  learned  the  far  nobler  lesson 
of  a  self-government  which  lifted  him  high  above  them  as  a 
ruler  among  men.  Severing  himself  from  the  brutal  triumph 
of  the  royalist  party,  he  secured  fair  terms  to  the  conquered, 
and  after  crushing  the  last  traces  of  resistance,  he  won  the 
adoption  by  the  crown  of  the  Constitutional  system  of 
government  for  which  the  barons  had  fought.  So  utterly 
was  the  land  at  rest  that  he  felt  free  to  join  a  crusade  in 
Palestine.  His  father's  death  recalled  him  home  to  meet  at 


THE   CONQUEST   OF   WALES.      1265   TO   1284.        21  •'• 

once  the  difficulty  of  Wales.  During  two  years  Llewelyn 
rejected  the  king's  repeated  summons  to  him  to  perform  his 
homage,  till  Edward's  patience  was  exhausted,  and  the  royal 
army  marched  into  North  Wales.  The  fabric  of  Welsh 
greatness  fell  at  a  single  blow  ;  the  chieftains  of  the  south 
and  center  who  had  so  lately  sworn  fealty  to  Llewelyn  de- 
serted him  to  join  his  English  enemies  ;  an  English  fleet  re- 
duced Anglesea,  and  the  Prince,  cooped  up  in  his  fastnesses, 
was  forced  to  throw  himself  on  the  royal  mercy.  With 
characteristic  moderation  his  conqueror  contented  himself 
with  adding  to  the  English  dominions  the  coast-district  as 
far  as  Conway,  and  providing  that  the  title  of  Prince  of  Wales 
should  cease  at  Llewelyn's  death.  A  heavy  fine  which  he 
had  incurred  was  remitted,  and  Eleanor  the  daughter  of 
Simon  of  Montfort,  who  had  been  arrested  on  her  way  to  join 
him  as  his  wife,  was  wedded  to  him  at  the  English  court. 
For  four  years  all  was  quiet,  but  the  persuasions  of  his  brother 
David,  who  had  deserted  him  in  the  previous  war,  and  whose 
desertion  had  been  rewarded  with  an  English  lordship,  roused 
Llewelyn  to  a  fresh  revolt.  A  prophecy  of  Merlin  had  an- 
nounced that  when  English  money  became  round  the  Prince 
of  Wales  should  be  crowned  at  London  ;  and  a  new  coinage 
of  copper  money,  coupled  with  the  prohibition  to  break  the 
silver  penny  into  halves  and  quarters,  as  had  been  usual,  was 
supposed  to  have  fulfilled  the  prediction.  In  the  campaign 
which  followed  the  Prince  held  out  in  Snowdon  with  the 
stubbornness  of  despair,  and  the  rout  of  an  English  detach- 
ment which  had  thrown  a  bridge  across  the  Menai  Straits 
into  Anglesea  prolonged  the  contest  into  the  winter.  Terrible 
however  as  were  the  sufferings  of  the  English  army,  Edward's 
firmness  remained  unbroken,  and  rejecting  all  proposals  of 
retreat  he  issued  orders  for  the  formation  of  a  new  army  at 
Caermarthen  to  complete  the  circle  of  investment  round 
Llewelyn.  The  Prince  sallied  from  his  mountain-hold  for  a 
raid  upon  Radnorshire,  and  fell  in  a  petty  skirmish  on  the 
banks  of  the  Wye.  With  him  died  the  independence  of  his 
race.  After  six  months  of  flight  his  brother  David  was 
arrested  and  sentenced  in  full  Parliament  to  a  traitor's  death. 
The  submission  of  the  lesser  chieftains  was  followed  by  the 
building  of  strong  castles  at  Conway  and  Caernarvon,  and 
the  settlement  of  English  barons  on  the  confiscated  soil.  A 


214  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

wiser  instinct  of  government  led  Edward  to  introduce  by  the 
"  Statute  of  Wales  "  English  law  and  the  English  adminis- 
tration of  justice  into  Wales.  But  little  came  of  the  attempt ; 
and  it  was  not  till  the  time  of  Henry  the  Eighth  that  the 
country  was  actually  incorporated  in  England.  What  Edward 
had  really  done  was  to  break  the  Welsh  resistance.  His 
policy  of  justice  (for  the  "  massacre  of  the  bards  "  is  a  mere 
fable)  accomplished  its  end,  and  in  spite  of  two  later  rebel- 
lions Wales  ceased  to  be  any  serious  danger  to  England  for  a 
hundred  years. 

Section  II.— The  English  Parliament,    1383—1295. 

[Authorities. — The  short  treatise  on  the  Constitution  of  Parliament  called 
"  Modus  tenendi  Parliamenta  "  may  be  taken  as  a  fair  account  of  its  actual  state 
and  powers  in  the  fourteenth  century.  It  has  been  reprinted  by  Dr.  Stubbs,  in 
the  invaluable  collection  of  Documents  which  serves  as  the  base  of  the  present 
section.  Sir  Francis  Palgrave  has  illustrated  the  remedial  side  of  our  parliamen- 
tary institutions  with  much  vigor  and  picturesqueness  in  his  "  History  of  the 
English  Commonwealth,"  but  his  conclusions  are  often  hasty  and  prejudiced. 
On  all  constitutional  points  from  the  reign  of  Edward  the  First  we  can  now  rely 
on  the  judgment  and  research  of  Mr.  Hallam  ("  Middle  Ages  ").] 

[The  second  volume  of  Dr.  Stubbs's  "Constitutional  History,"  which  deals  with 
this  period  was  published  after  this  History  was  written  and  the  list  of  authorities 
prepared.— ED.] 

The  conquest  of  Wales  marked  the  adoption  of  a  new  at- 
titude and  policy  on  the  part  of  the  crown.  From  the 

earliest  moment  of  his  reign  Edward  the  First 
The  New  definitely  abandoned  all  dreams  of  recovering  the 

foreign  dominions  which  his  grandfather  had  lost. 
He  concentrated  himself  on  the  consolidation  and  good 
government  of  England  itself.  We  can  only  fairly  judge  his 
annexation  of  Wales,  or  his  attempt  to  annex  Scotland,  if  we 
regard  them  as  parts  of  the  same  scheme  of  national  admin- 
istration to  which  we  owe  his  final  establishment  of  our  judi- 
cature, our  legislation,  our  Parliament.  The  king's  Eng- 
lish policy,  like  his  English  name,  was  the  sign  of  a  new 
epoch.  The  long  period  of  national  formation  had  come 
practically  to  an  end.  With  the  reign  of  Edward  begins 
modern  England,  the  constitutional  England  in  which  we 
live.  It  is  not  that  any  chasm  separates  our  history  before 
it  from  our  history  after  it,  as  the  chasm  of  the  Kevolution 
divides  the  history  of  France,  for  we  have  traced  the  rudi- 
ments of  our  constitution  to  the  first  moment  of  the  Eng- 


THE   ENGLISH   PARLIAMENT.      1288   TO    1295.        21,"> 

lish  settlement  in  Britain.  But  it  is  with  these  as  with  our 
language.  The  tongue  of  ^Elfred  is  the  very  tongue  we 
speak,  but  in  spite  of  its  identity  with  modern  English  it  has 
to  be  learned  like  the  tongue  of  a  stranger.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  English  of  Chaucer  is  almost  as  intelligible  as  our 
own.  In  the  first  the  historian  and  philologer  can  study  the 
origin  and  development  of  our  national  speech,  in  the  last 
;v  schoolboy  can  enjoy  the  story  of  Troilus  and  Cressida,  or 
listen  to  the  gay  chat  of  the  Canterbury  Pilgrims.  In  pre- 
cisely the  same  way  a  knowledge  of  our  earliest  laws  is  indis- 
pensable for  the  right  understanding  of  later  legislation,  its 
origin  and  its  development,  while  the  principles  of  our 
Parliamentary  system  must  necessarily  be  studied  in  the 
Meetings  of  Wise  Men  before  the  Conquest  or  the  Great 
Council  of  barons  after  it.  But  the  Parliaments  which 
Edward  gathered  at  the  close  of  his  reign  are  not  merely  il- 
lustrative of  the  history  of  later  Parliaments,  they  are  abso- 
lutely identical  with  those  which  still  sit  at  St.  Stephen's ; 
and  a  statute  of  Edward,  if  unrepealed,  can  be  pleaded  in 
our  courts  as  formally  as  a  statute  of  Victoria.  In  a  word, 
the  long  struggle  of  the  constitution  for  actual  existence  has 
come  to  an  end.  The  contests  which  follow  are  not  contests 
which  tell,  like  those  which  preceded  them,  on  the  actual 
fabric  of  our  political  institutions  ;  they  are  simply  stages  in 
the  rough  discipline  by  which  England  has  learned,  and  is 
still  learning,  how  best  to  use  and  how  wisely  to  develop  the 
latent  powers  of  its  national  life,  how  to  adjust  the  balance 
of  its  social  and  political  forces,  and  to  adapt  its  constitutional 
forms  to  the  varying  conditions  of  the  time.  From  the  reign 
of  Edward,  in  fact,  we  are  face  to  face  with  modern  England. 
King,  Lords,  Commons,  the  Courts  of  Justice,  the  forms  of 
public  administration,  our  local  divisions  and  provincial  juris- 
dictions, the  relations  of  Church  and  State,  in  great  measure 
the  framework  of  society  itself,  have  all  taken  the  shape 
which  they  still  essentially  retain. 

Much  of  this  great  change  is  doubtless  attributable  to  the 
general  temper  of  the  age,  whose  special  task  and  object 
seemed  to  be  that  of  reducing  to  distinct  form 
the  great  principles  which  had  sprung  into  a  new 
and  vigorous  life  during  the  century  that  preceded 
it.  As  the  opening  of  the  thirteenth  century  had  been  an 


Iil6  HISTOltY    OF   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

age  of  founders,  creators,  discoverers,  so  its  close  was  an  age 
of  lawyers ;  the  most  illustrious  men  of  the  time  were  no 
longer  such  as  Bacon,  or  Earl  Simon,  or  Francis  of  Assisi, 
but  men  such  as  St.  Lewis  of  France  or  Alfonso  the  Wise, 
organizers,  administrators,  framers  of  laws  and  institutions. 
It  was  to  this  class  that  Edward  himself  belonged.  He 
had  little  of  creative  genius  or  political  originality  in  his 
character,  but  he  possessed  in  a  high  degree  the  faculty  of 
organization,  and  his  passionate  love  of  law  broke  out  even 
in  the  legal  chicanery  to  which  he  sometimes  stooped.  In 
the  judicial  reforms  to  which  so  much  of  his  attention  was 
directed,  he  showed  himself,  if  not  an  "  English  Justinian," 
at  any  rate  a  clear-sighted  man  of  business,  developing,  re- 
forming, bringing  into  a  lasting  shape  the  institution  of  his 
predecessors.  One  of  his  first  cares  was  to  complete  the 
judicial  reforms  begun  by  Henry  II.  The  most  important 
court  of  civil  jurisdiction,  the  Sheriff's  or  County  Court,  re- 
mained unchanged,  both  in  the  extent  of  its  jurisdiction, 
and  the  character  of  the  Sheriff  as  a  royal  officer.'  But  the 
superior  courts  into  which  the  King's  Court  had  since  the 
Great  Charter  divided  itself,  those  of  the  King's  Bench,  Ex- 
chequer, and  Common  Pleas,  now  received  a  distinct  staff  of 
judges  for  each  court.  Of  far  greater  importance  than  this 
change,  which  was  in  effect  but  the  completion  of  a  process 
of  severance  that  had  long  been  going  on,  was  the  establish- 
ment of  an  equitable  jurisdiction  side  by  side  with  that  of  the 
common  law.  In  his  reform  of  1178  Henry  the  Second  had 
broken  up  the  older  King's  Court,  which  had  till  then  served 
as  the  final  Court  of  Appeal,  by  the  severance  of  the  purely 
legal  judges  who  had  been  gradually  added  to  it  from  the 
general  body  of  his  councilors.  The  judges  thus  severed 
from  the  Council  retained  the  name  and  the  ordinary  juris- 
diction of  "the  King's  Court,"  while  all  cases  in  which  they 
failed  to  do  justice  were  reserved  for  the  special  cognizance 
of  the  royal  Council  itself.  To  this  final  jurisdiction  of  the 
king  in  Council  Edward  gave  a  wide  development.  His 
assembly  of  the  ministers,  the  higher  permanent  officials,  and 
the  law  officers  of  the  crown,  for  the  first  time  reserved  to 
itself  in  its  judicial  capacity  the  correction  of  all  breaches  of 
the  law  which  the  lower  courts  had  failed  to  repress,  whether 
from  weakness,  partiality,  or  corruption,  and  especially  of 


THE   ENGLISH    PARLIAMENT.      1283    TO    1295.        217 

those  lawless  outbreaks  of  the  more  powerful  baronage  which 
defied  the  common  authority  of  the  judges.  Though  re- 
garded with  jealousy  by  Parliament,  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Council  seems  to  have  been  steadily  put  in  force  through  the 
two  centuries  which  followed  ;  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Seventh  it  took  legal  and  statutory  form  in  the  shape  of  the 
Court  of  Star  Chamber,  and  its  powers  are  still  exercised  in 
our  own  day  by  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council. 
But  the  same  duty  of  the  crown  to  do  justice  where  its  courts 
fell  short  of  giving  due  redress  for  wrong  expressed  itself  in 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  chancellor.  This  great  officer  of 
State,  who  had  perhaps  originally  acted  only  as  President  of 
the  Council  when  discharging  its  judicial  functions,  acquired 
at  a  very  early  date  an  independent  judicial  position  of  the 
same  nature.  It  is  by  remembering  the  origin  of  the  Court 
of  Chancery  that  we  understand  the  nature  of  the  powers  it 
gradually  acquired.  All  grievances  of  the  subject,  especially 
those  which  sprang  from  the  misconduct  of  government 
officials  or  of  powerful  oppressors,  fell  within  its  cognizance, 
as  they  fell  within  that  of  the  Eoyal  Council,  and  to  these 
were  added  disputes  respecting  the  wardship  of  infants, 
dower,  rent-charges,  or  tithes.  Its  equitable  jurisdiction 
sprang  from  the  defective  nature  and  the  technical  and  un- 
bending rules  of  the  common  law.  As  the  Council  had 
given  redress  in  cases  where  law  became  injustice,  so  the 
Court  of  Chancery  interfered  without  regard  to  the  rules  of 
procedure  adopted  by  the  common-law  courts,  on  the  petition 
of  a  party  for  whose  grievance  the  common  law  provided  no 
adequate  remedy.  An  analogous  extension  of  his  powers 
enabled  the  Chancellor  to  afford  relief  in  cases  of  fraud, 
accident,  or  abuse  of  trust,  and  this  side  of  his  jurisdiction 
was  largely  extended  at  a  later  time  through  the  results  of 
legislation  on  the  tenure  of  land  by  ecclesiastical  bodies.  The 
separate  powers  of  the  Chancellor,  whatever  was  the  original 
date  at  which  they  were  first  exercised,  seem  to  have  been 
thoroughly  established  under  Edward  the  First. 

In  legislation,  as  in  his  judicial  reforms,  Edward  renewed 
and  consolidated  the  principles  which  had  been  already 
brought  into  practical  working  by  Henry  the 

Second.     Significant   acts  announced   his  deter-  ,Ed^fr^'8 

,  -TT          >         i-         *  T     •  •        Legislation, 
initiation  to  carry  out  Henry  s  policy  of  limiting 


218  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  independent  jurisdiction  of  the  Church.  He  was  resolute 
to  force  it  to  become  thoroughly  national  by  bearing  its  due 
part  of  the  common  national  burdens,  and  to  break  its  grow- 
ing dependence  upon  Rome.  The  defiant  resistance  of  the 
ecclesiastical  body  was  answered  in  an  emphatic  way.  By 
falling  into  the  "  dead  hand  "  or  "  mortmain  "  of  the  Church 
land  ceased  to  render  its  feudal  services  ;  and  the  Statute  "of 
Mortmain "  now  forbade  the  alienation  of  laud  to  religious 
bodies  in  such  wise  that  it  should  cease  to  render  its  due 
service  to  the  king.  The  restriction  was  probably  no  bene- 
ficial one  to  the  country  at  large,  for  Churchmen  were  the 
best  landlords,  and  it  was  soon  evaded  by  the  ingenuity  of 
the  clerical  lawyers  ;  but  it  marked  the  growing  jealousy  of 
any  attempt  to  set  aside  what  was  national  from  serving  the 
general  need  and  profit  of  the  nation.  Its  immediate  effect 
was  to  stir  the  clergy  to  a  bitter  resentment.  But  Edward 
remained  firm,  and  when  the  bishops  proposed  to  restrict  the 
royal  courts  from  dealing  with  cases  of  patronage  or  causes 
which  touched  the  chattels  of  Churchmen  he  met  their  pro- 
posals by  an  instant  prohibition.  His  care  for  the  trading 
classes  was  seen  in  the  Statute  of  Merchants,  which  provided 
for  the  registration  of  the  debts  of  traders,  and  for  their  re- 
covery by  distraint  of  the  debtor's  goods  and  the  imprisonment 
of  his  person.  The  Statute  of  Winchester,  the  greatest  of 
Edward's  measures  for  the  enforcement  of  public  order,  re- 
vived and  reorganized  the  old  institutions  of  national  police 
and  national  defense.  It  regulated  the  action  of  the  hundred, 
the  duty  of  watch  and  ward,  and  the  gathering  of  the  fyrd  or 
militia  of  the  realm  as  Henry  the  Second  had  molded  it  into 
form  in  his  Assize  of  Arms.  Every  man  was  bound  to  hold 
himself  in  readiness,  duly  armed,  for  the  king's  service  in 
case  of  invasion  or  revolt,  or  to  pursue  felons  when  hue  and 
cry  were  raised  after  them.  Every  district  was  made  respon- 
sible for  crimes  committed  within  its  bounds  ;  the  gates  of 
each  town  were  required  to  be  closed  at  nightfall,  and  all 
strangers  to  give  an  account  of  themselves  to  its  magistrates. 
As  a  security  for  travelers  against  sudden  attacks  from  rob- 
bers, all  brushwood  was  to  be  destroyed  for  a  space  of  two 
hundred  feet  on  either  side  the  public  highway,  a  provision 
which  illustrates  at  once  the  social  and  physical  condition  of 
the  country  at  the  time.  To  enforce  the  observance  of  this 


THE  ENGLISH   PARLIAMENT.      1283   TO   1295.        21!) 

act  knights  were  appointed  in  every  shire  under  the  name  of 
Conservators  of  the  Peace,  a  name  which,  as  the  convenience 
of  these  local  magistrates  was  more  sensibly  felt  and  their 
powers  more  largely  extended,  was  changed  for  that  which 
they  still  retain  of  "Justices  of  the  Peace."  The  great 
measure  which  is  commonly  known  as  the  Statute  "  Quia 
Emptores  "  is  one  of  those  legislative  efforts  which  mark  the 
progress  of  a  wide  social  revolution  in  the  country  at  large. 
The  number  of  the  greater  barons  was  diminishing  every  day, 
while  the  number  of  the  country  gentry  and  of  the  more  sub- 
stantial yeomanry  was  increasing  with  the  increase  of  the  na- 
tional wealth.  This  increase  showed  itself  in  the  growing 
desire  to  become  proprietors  of  land.  Tenants  of  the  greater 
barons  received  under-tenants  on  condition  of  their  rendering 
them  similar  services  to  those  which  they  themselves  rendered 
to  their  lords ;  and  the  baronage,  while  duly  receiving  the 
services  in  compensation  for  which  they  had  originally  granted 
their  lands  in  fee,  saw  with  jealousy  the  feudal  profits  of 
these  new  under-tenants,  the  profits  of  wardship  or  of  reliefs 
and  the  like,  in  a  word,  the  whole  increase  in  the  value  of  the 
estate  consequent  on  its  subdivision  and  higher  cultivation, 
passing  into  other  hands  than  their  own.  The  purpose  of 
the  statute  was  to  check  this  process  by  providing  that  in 
any  case  of  alienation  the  sub-tenant  should  henceforth  hold, 
not  of  the  tenant,  but  directly  of  the  superior  lord.  But  its 
result  was  to  promote  instead  of  hindering  the  transfer  and 
subdivision  of  land.  The  tenant  who  was  before  compelled 
to  retain  in  any  case  so  much  of  the  estate  as  enabled  him  to 
discharge  his  feudal  services  to  the  over-lord  of  whom  he 
held  it,  was  now  enabled  by  a  process  analogous  to  the 
modern  sale  of  "  tenant-right,"  to  transfer  both  land  and 
services  to  new  holders.  However  small  the  estates  thus 
created  might  be,  the  bulk  were  held  directly  of  the  crown  ; 
and  this  class  of  lesser  gentry  and  freeholders  grew  steadily 
from  this  time  in  numbers  and  importance. 

It  is  to  the  same  social  revolution  as  well  as  to  the  large 
statesmanship  of  Edward  the  First  that  we  owe  our  Parlia- 
ment.    Neither  the  Meeting  of  the  Wise  Men  be-   ^  Great 
fore  the  Conquest,  nor  the  Great  Council  of  the     Council 
Barons  after  it,  had  been  in  any  way  representative      of  the    - 
bodies.     The  first  theoretically  included  all  free- 


220  HISTORY    OF   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

holders  of  land,  but  it  shrank  at  an  early  time  into  a  gather- 
ing of  earls,  higher  nobles,  and  bishops,  with  the  officers 
and  thegus  of  the  royal  household.  Little  change  was  made 
in  the  composition  of  this  assembly  by  the  Conquest,  for  the 
Great  Council  of  the  Norman  kings  was  held  to  include 
all  tenants  who  held  directly  of  the  crown,  the  bishops  and 
greater  abbots  (whose  character  as  independent  spiritual 
members  tended  more  and  more  to  merge  in  their  position 
as  barons),  and  the  great  officers  of  the  Court.  But  though 
its  composition  remained  the  same,  the  character  of  the 
assembly  was  essentially  altered.  From  a  free  gathering  of 
"  Wise  Men"  it  sank  to  a  Royal  Court  of  feudal  vassals.  Its 
functions  seem  to  have  become  almost  nominal,  and  its  powers 
to  have  been  restricted  to  the  sanctioning,  without  debate  or 
possibility  of  refusal,  all  grants  demanded  from  it  by  the 
crown.  Its  "  counsel  and  consent,"  however,  remained 
necessary  for  the  legal  validity  of  every  great  fiscal  or  politi- 
cal measure,  and  its  very  existence  was  an  effectual  protest 
against  the  imperial  theories  advanced  by  the  lawyers  of 
Henry  the  Second,  theories  which  declared  all  legislative 
power  to  reside  wholly  in  the  sovereign.  It  was  in  fact  under 
Henry  that  these  assemblies  became  more  regular,  and  their 
functions  more  important.  The  reforms  which  marked  his 
reign  were  issued  in  the  Great  Council,  and  even  financial 
matters  were  suffered  to  be  debated  there.  But  it  was  not 
till  the  grant  of  the  Great  Charter  that  its  powers  over  tax- 
ation were  formally  recognized,  and  the  principle  established 
that  no  burden  beyond  the  customary  feudal  aids  might  be 
imposed  "  save  by  the  Common  Council  of  the  Realm."  Tne 
same  great  document  first  expressly  regulated  its  form.  In 
theory,  as  we  have  seen,  the  assembly  consisted  of  all  who 
held  land  directly  of  the  crown.  But  the  same  causes  which 
restricted  attendance  at  the  Witenagernot  to  the  greater  no- 
bles told  on  the  actual  composition  of  the  Council  of  Barons. 
While  the  attendance  of  the  ordinary  tenants  in  chief,  the 
Knights  or  "Lesser  Barons/'  was  burdensome  from  its  ex- 
pense to  themselves,  their  numbers  and  their  dependence  on 
the  higher  nobles  made  their  assembly  dangerous  to  the  crown. 
As  early,  therefore,  as  the  time  of  H.enry  the 'First  we  find 
a  distinction  recognized  between  the  "  Greater  Barons,"  of 
whom  the  Council  was  usually  composed,  and  the  "  Lesser 


THE   ENGLISH    PARLIAMENT.      1283   TO   1295.       221 

Barons  "  who  formed  the  bulk  of  the  tenants  of  the  crown. 
But  though  the  attendance  of  the  latter  had  become  rare, 
their  right  of  attendance  remained  intact.  While  enacting 
that  the  prelates  and  greater  barons  should  be  summoned  by 
special  writs  to  each  gathering  of  the  Council,  a  remarkable 
provision  of  the  Great  Charter  orders  a  general  summons  to 
be  issued  through  the  Sheriff  to  all  direct  tenants  of  the 
crown.  The  provision  was  probably  intended  to  rouse  the 
lesser  baronage  to  the  exercise  of  rights  which  had  practically 
passed  into  desuetude,  but  as  the  clause  is  omitted  in  later 
issues  of  the  Charter  we  may  doubt  whether  the  principle  it 
embodied  ever  received  more  than  a  very  limited  application. 
There  are  traces  of  the  attendance  of  a  few  of  the  lesser 
knighthood,  gentry  perhaps  of  the  neighborhood  where  the 
assembly  was  held,  in  some  of  its  meetings  under  Henry  the 
Third,  but  till  a  late  period  in  the  reign  of  his  successor  the 
Great  Council  practically  remained  a  gathering  of  the  greater 
barons,  the  prelates,  and  the  officers  of  the  crown.  The 
change  which  the  Great  Charter  had  failed  to  accomplish 
was  now,  however,  brought  about  by  the  social  circumstances 
of  the  time.  One  of  the  most  remarkable  of  these  was  the 
steady  decrease  in  the  number  of  the  greater  nobles.  The 
bulk  of  the  earldoms  had  already  lapsed  to  the  crown  through 
the  extinction  of  the  families  of  their  possessors  ;  of  the  greater 
baronies,  many  had  practically  ceased  to  exist  by  their  division 
among  co-heiresses,  many  through  the  constant  struggle  of 
the  poorer  barons  to  rid  themselves  of  their  rank  by  a  dis- 
claimer, so  as  to  escape  the  burden  of  higher  taxation  and 
attendance  in  Parliament  which  it  involved.  How  far  this 
diminution  had  gone  we  may  see  from,  the  fact  that  hardly 
more  than  a  hundred  barons  sat  in  the  earlier  Councils  of 
Edward's  reign.  But  while  the  number  of  those  who  actually 
possessed  the  privilege  of  assisting  in  Parliament  was  rapidly 
diminishing,  the  numbers  and  wealth  of  the  "  lesser  baron- 
age/' whose  right  of  attendance  had  become  a  mere  con- 
stitutional tradition,  was  as  rapidly  increasing.  The  long 
peace  and  prosperity  of  the  realm,  the  extension  of  its  com- 
merce, and  the  increased  export  of  wool,  were  swelling  the 
ranks  and  incomes  of  the  country  gentry  as  well  as  of  the  free- 
holders and  substantial  yeomanry.  We  have  already  noticed 
the  growing  passion  for  the  possession  of  land  which  makes 


222  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

this  reigu  so  critical  a  moment  in  the  history  of  the  English 
freeholder  ;  but  the  same  tendency  had  to  some  extent  ex- 
isted in  the  preceding  century,  and  it  was  a  consciousness  of 
the  growing  importance  of  this  class  of  rural  proprietors 
which  induced  the  barons  at  the  time  of  the  Charter  to  make 
their  fruitless  attempt  to  induce  them  to  take  part  in  the 
deliberations  of  the  Great  Council.  But  while  the  barons 
desired  their  presence  as  an  aid  against  the  crown,  the  crown 
itself  desired  it  as  a  means  of  rendering  taxation  more  efficient. 
So  long  as  the  Great  Council  remained  a  mere  assembly  of 
magnates  it  was  necessary  for  the  king's  ministers  to  treat 
separately  with  the  other  orders  of  the  state  as  to  the  amount 
and  assessment  of  their  contributions.  The  grant  made  in 
the  Great  Council  was  binding  only  on  the  barons  and  prel- 
ates who  made  it ;  but  before  the  aids  of  the  boroughs,  the 
Church,  or  the  shires  could  reach  the  royal  treasury,  a 
separate  negotiation  had  to  be  conducted  by  the  officers  of 
the  Exchequer  with  the  reeves  of  each  town,  the  sheriff  and 
shire-court  of  each  county,  and  the  archdeacons  of  each 
diocese.  Bargains  of  this  sort  would  be  the  more  tedious 
and  disappointing  as  the  necessities  of  the  crown  increased 
in  the  later  years  of  Edward,  and  it  became  a  matter  of 
fiscal  expediency  to  obtain  the  sanction  of  any  proposed  tax- 
ation through  the  presence  of  these  classes  m  the  Great 
Council  itself. 

The  effort,  however,  to  revive  the  old  personal  attendance 

of  the  lesser  baronage,  which  had  broken  down  half  a  century 

before,  could  hardly  be  renewed  at  a  time  when 

ti^i/f    the  increase  of  their  numbers  made  it  more  im- 

uue  on  re.  . 

practicable  than  ever  ;  but  a  means  of  escape  from 
this  difficulty  was  fortunately  suggested  by  the  very  nature 
of  the  court  through  which  alone  a  summons  could  be  ad- 
dressed to  the  landed  knighthood.  Amidst  the  many  judicial 
reforms  of  Henry  or  Edward  the  Shire  Court  remained  un- 
changed. The  haunted  mound  or  the  immemorial  oak  round 
which  the  assembly  gathered  (for  the  court  was  often  held 
in  the  open  air)  were  the  relics  of  a  time  before  the  free 
kingdom  had  sunk  into  a  shire,  and  its  folk-moot  into  a 
County  Court.  But  save  that  the  king's  reeve  had  taken 
the  place  of  the  king,  and  that  the  Norman  legislation  had 
displaced  the  Bishop  and  set  four  Coroners  by  the  Sheriff's 


THE  ENGLISH    PARLIAMENT.      1283   TO   1295.       223 

side,  the  gathering  of  the  freeholders  remained  much  as  of 
ol'd.  The  local  knighthood,  the  yeomanry,  the  husbandmen 
of  the  county,  were  all  represented  in  the  crowd  that  gathered 
round  the  Sheriff,  as,  guarded  by  his  liveried  followers,  he 
published  the  king's  writs,  announced  his  demand  of  aids, 
received  the  presentment  of  criminals  and  the  inquest  of 
the  local  jurors,  assessed  the  taxation  of  each  district,  or 
listened  solemnly  to  appeals  for  justice,  civil  and  criminal, 
from  all  who  held  themselves  oppressed  in  the  lesser  courts 
of  the  hundred  or  the  soke.  It  was  in  the  County  Court 
alone  that  the  Sheriff  could  legally  summon  the  lesser  baron- 
age to  attend  the  Great  Council,  and  it  was  in  the  actual 
constitution  of  this  assembly  that  the  crown  found  asolution 
of  the  difficulty  which  we  have  already  stated.  For  the 
principle  of  representation  by  which  it  was  finally  solved  Avas 
coeval  with  the  Shire  Court  itself.  In  all  cases  of  civil  or 
criminal  justice  the  twelve  sworn  assessors  of  the  Sheriff,  as 
members  of  a  class,  though  not  formally  deputed  for  that 
purpose,  practically  represented  the  judicial  opinion  of  the 
county  at  large.  From  every  hundred  came  groups  of  twelve 
sworn  deputies,  the  "jurors,"  through  whom  the  present- 
ments of  the  district  were  made  to  the  royal  officer,  and  with 
whom  the  assessment  of  its  share  in  the  general  taxation  was 
arranged.  The  husbandmen  on  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd, 
clad  in  the  brown  smock  frock  which  still  lingers  in  the  garb 
of  our  carters  and  ploughmen,  were  broken  up  into  little 
knots  of  five,  a  reeve  and  four  assistants,  who  formed  the 
representatives  of  the  rura\  townships.  If,  in  fact,  we  regard 
the  Shire  Courts  as  lineally  the  descendants  of  our  earliest 
English  folk-moots,  .we  may  justly  claim  the  principle  of 
parliamentary  representation  as  among  the  oldest  of  our  in- 
stitutions. But  it  was  only  slowly  and  tentatively  that  this 
principle  was  applied  to  the  reconstitution  of  the  Great 
Council.  As  early  as  the  close  of  John's  reign  there  are  in- 
dications of  the  approaching  change  in  the  summons  of  "four 
discreet  knights  "  from  every  county.  Fresh  need  of  local 
support  was  felt  by  both  parties  in  the  conflict  of  the  suc- 
ceeding reign,  and  Henry  and  his  barons  alike  summoned 
knights  from  each  shire  "  to  meet  on  the  common  business 
of  the  realm."  If,  was  no  doubt  with  the  same  purpose  that 
the  writs  of  Earl  Simon  ordered  the  choice  of  knights  in  <.>a< -U 


224  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

shire  for  his  famous  parliament  of  1265.  Something  like  a 
continuous  attendance  may  be  dated  from  the  accession  of 
Edward,  but  it  was  long  before  the  knights  Avere  regarded 
as  more  than  local  deputies  for  the  assessment  of  taxation, 
or  admitted  to  a  share  in  the  general  business  of  the  Great 
Council.  The  Statute  "  Quia  Emptores,"  for  instance.,  was 
passed  in  it  before  the  knights  who  had  been  summoned 
could  attend.  Their  participation  in  the  deliberative  power 
of  Parliament,  as  well  as  their  regular  and  continuous  at- 
tendance, dates  only  from  the  Parliament  of  1295.  But  a 
far  greater  constitutional  change  in  their  position  had  al- 
ready taken  place  through  the  extension  of  electoral  rights 
to  the  freeholders  at  large.  The  one  class  entitled  to  a  seat 
in  the  Great  Council  was,  as  we  have  seen,  that  of  the  lesser 
baronage  ;  and  of  the  lesser  baronage  alone  the  knights  were 
in  theory  the  representatives.  But  the  necessity  of  holding 
their  election  in  the  County  Court  rendered  any  restriction 
of  the  electoral  body  physically  impossible.  The  court  was 
composed  of  the  whole  body  of  freeholders,  and  no  sheriff 
could  distinguish  the  "  aye,  aye"  of  the  yeoman  from  the 
"aye,  aye"  of  the  lesser  baron.  From  the  first  moment 
therefore  of  their  attendance  we  find  the  knights  regarded 
not  as  mere  representatives  of  the  baronage,  but  as  knights 
of  the  shire,  and  by  this  silent  revolution  the  whole  body  of 
the  rural  freeholders  were  admitted  to  a  share  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  realm. 

The  financial  difficulties  of  the  crown  led  to  a  far  more 
radical  revolution  in  the  admission  into  the  Great  Council 
Representa-  °^  representatives  from  the  boroughs.     The  pres- 
tion  of      ence  of  knights  from  each  shire  was,  as  we  have 
Boroughs.    seenj  the  recognition  of  an  older  right,  but  no  right 
of  attendance  or  share  in  the  national  "  counsel  and  consent " 
could  be  pleaded  for  the   burgesses  of  the  towns.     On  the 
other  hand,  the  rapid  development  of  their  wealth  made  them 
every  day  more  important  as  elements  in  the  national  taxa- 
tion.    The  towns  had  long  since  freed  themselves  from  all 
payment  of  the  dues  or  fines  exacted   by  the   king,  as  the 
original  lord  of  the  soil  on  which  they  had  in  most  cases 
grown  up,  by  what  was  called  the  purchase  of  the  "farm  of 
the  borough  "  ;  in  other  words,  by  the  commutation  of  these 
uncertain  dues  for  a  fixed  sum  paid  annually  to  the  crown, 


THE   ENGLISH   PAKLIA-MENT.      1283   TO   1295.        226 

and  apportioned  by  their  own  magistrates  among  the  general 
body  of  the  burghers.  All  that  the  king  legally  retained 
was  the  right  enjoyed  by  every  great  proprietor  of  levying  a 
corresponding  taxation  on  his  tenants  in  demesne  under  the 
name  of  "  a  free  aid/'  whenever  a  grant  was  made  for  the 
national  necessities  by  the  barons  of  the  Great  Council. 
But  the  temptation  of  appropriating  the  growing  wealth  of 
the  mercantile  class  proved  stronger  than  legal  restrictions, 
and  we  find  both  Henry  the  Third  and  his  son  assuming  a 
right  of  imposing  taxes  at  pleasure  and  without  any  author- 
ity from  the  Council  even  over  London  itself.  The  burgesses 
could  refuse  indeed  the  invitation  to  contribute  to  the  "free 
aid  "  demanded  by  the  royal  officers,  but  the  suspension  of 
their  markets  or  trading  privileges  brought  them  in  the 
end  to  submission.  Each  of  these  "  free  aids,"  however,  had 
to  be  extorted  after  a  long  wrangle  between  the  borough 
and  the  officers  of  the  Exchequer ;  and  if  the  towns  were 
driven  to  comply  with  what  they  considered  an  extortion, 
they  could  generally  force  the  crown  by  evasions  and  delays 
to  a  compromise  and  abatement  of  its  original  demands. 
The  same  financial  reasons,  therefore  existed  for  desiring  the 
presence  of  their  representatives  in  the  Great  Council  as 
existed  in  the  case  of  the  shires ;  but  it  was  the  genius  of 
Earl  Simon  which  first  broke  through  the  older  constitu- 
tional tradition,  and  dared  to  summon  two  burgesses  from 
each  town  to  the  Parliament  of  1265.  Time  had,  indeed,  to 
pass  before  the  large  and  statesmanlike  conception  of  the 
great  patriot  could  meet  with  full  acceptance.  Through  the 
earlier  part  of  Edward's  reign  we  find  a  few  instances  of  the 
presence  of  representatives  from  the  towns,  but  their  scanty 
numbers  and  the  irregularity  of  their  attendance  show  that 
they  were  summoned  rather  to  afford  financial  information 
to  the  Great  Council  than  as  representatives  in  it  of  an  Estate 
of  the  Realm.  But  every  year  pleaded  stronger  and  stronger 
for  their  inclusion,  and  in  the  Parliament  of  1295  that  of 
1265  found  itself  at  last  reproduced.  "  It  was  from  me  that 
he  learnt  it,"  Earl  Simon  had  cried,  as  he  recognized  the 
military  skill  of  Edward's  onset  at  Evesham  ;  "  It  was  from 
me  that  he  learnt  it,"  his  spirit  might  have  exclaimed,  as  he 
saw  the  king  gathering  at  last  two  burgesses  "  from  every 
city,  borough,  and  leading  town  "  within  his  realm  to  sit  side 
'5 


226  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

by  side  with  the  knights,  nobles,  and  barons  of  the  Great 
Council.  To  the  crown  the  change  was  from  the  first  an 
advantageous  one.  The  grants  of  subsidies  by  the  burgesses 
in  Parliament  proved  more  profitable  than  the  previous  ex- 
tortions of  the  Exchequer.  The  proportion  of  their  grant 
generally  exceeded  that  of  the  other  estates  by  a  tenth. 
Their  representatives  too  proved  far  more  compliant  with 
the  royal  will  than  the  barons  or  knights  of  the  shire  ;  only 
on  one  occasion  during  Edward's  reign  did  the  burgesses  waver 
from  their  general  support  of  the  crown.  It  was  easy  indeed 
to  control  them,  for  the  selection  of  boroughs  to  be  repre- 
sented remained  wholly  in  the  king's  hands,  and  their 
numbers  could  be  increased  or  diminished  at  the  king's 
pleasure.  The  determination  was  left  to  the  sheriff,  and  at 
a  hint  from  the  royal  Council  a  sheriff  of  Wilts  would  cut 
down  the  number  of  represented  boroughs  in  his  shire  from 
eleven  to  three,  or  a  sheriff  of  Bucks  declare  he  could  find 
but  a  single  borough,  that  of  Wycomb,  within  the  bounds  of 
the  county.  Nor  was  this  exercise  of  the  prerogative  ham- 
pered by  any  anxiety  on  the  part  of  the  towns  to  claim  rep- 
resentative privileges.  It  was  difficult  to  suspect  that  a 
power  before  which  the  crown  would  have  to  bow  lay  in  the 
ranks  of  soberly  clad  traders,  summoned  only  to  assess  the 
contributions  of  their  boroughs,  and  whose  attendance  was 
as  difficult  to  secure  as  it  seemed  burdensome  to  themselves 
and  the  towns  who  sent  them.  The  mass  of  citizens  took 
little  or  no  part  in  their  choice,  for  they  were  elected  in  the 
county  court  by  a  few  of  the  principal  burghers  deputed  for 
the  purpose ;  but  the  cost  of  their  maintenance,  the  two 
shillings  a  day  paid  to  the  burgess  by  his  town,  as  four  were 
paid  to  the  knight  by  his  county,  was  a  burden  from  which 
the  boroughs  made  desperate  efforts  to  escape.  Some  per- 
sisted in  making  no  return  to  the  sheriff.  Some  bought 
charters  of  exemption  from  the  troublesome  privilege.  Of 
the  165  who  were  summoned  by  Edward  the  First  more  than 
a  third  ceased  to  send  representatives  after  a  single  compli- 
ance with  the  royal  summons.  During  the  whole  time  from 
the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third  to  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Sixth  the  sheriff  of  Lancashire  declined  to  return  the  names 
of  any  boroughs  at  all  within  that  county,  "  on  account  of 
their  poverty."  Nor  were  the  representatives  themselves 


THE   ENGLISH   PARLIAMENT.      1283   TO   1295.       227 

more  anxious  to  appear  than  their  boroughs  to  send  them. 
The  busy  country  squire  and  the  thrifty  trader  were  equally 
reluctant  to  undergo  the  trouble  and  expense  of  a  journey 
to  Westminster.  Legal  measures  were  often  necessary  to 
insure  their  presence.  Writs  still  exist  in  abundance  such 
as  that  by  which  Walter  le  Rous  is  "  held  to  bail  in  eight 
oxen  and  four  cart-horses  to  come  before  the  king  on  the 
day  specified"  for  attendance  in  Parliament.  But  in  spite 
of  obstacles  such  as  these  the  presence  of  representatives 
from  the  boroughs  may  be  regarded  as  continuous  from  the 
Parliament  of  1295.  As  the  representation  of  the  lesser 
barons  had  widened  through  a  silent  change  into  that  of  the 
shire,  so  that  of  the  boroughs — restricted  in  theory  to  those 
in  royal  demesne — seems  practically  from  Edward's  time  to 
have  been  extended  to  all  who  were  in  a  condition  to  pay 
the  cost  of  their  representatives'  support.  By  a  change  as 
silent  within  the  Parliament  itself  the  burgess,  originally 
summoned  to  take  part  only  in  matters  of  taxation,  was  at 
last  admitted  to  a  full  share  in  the  deliberations  and  authority 
of  the  other  orders  of  the  State. 

The  admission  of  the  burgesses  and  knights  of  the  shire 
to  the  assembly  of  1295  completed  the  fabric  of  our  representa- 
tive constitution.  The  Great  Council  of  the 
Barons  had  become  the  Parliament  of  the  Realm, 
a  parliament  in  which  every  order  of  the  state 
found  itself  represented,  and  took  part  in  the  grant  of  sup- 
plies, the  work  of  legislation,  and  in  the  end  the  control 
of  government.  But  though  in  all  essential  points  the  char- 
acter of  Parliament  has  remained  the  same  from  that  time 
to  this,  there  were  some  remarkable  particulars  in  which  this 
assembly  of  1295  differed  widely  from  the  present  Parliament 
at  St.  Stephen's.  Some  of  these  differences,  such  as,  those 
which  sprang  from  the  increased  powers  and  changed  re- 
lations of  the  different  orders  among  themselves,  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  consider  at  a  later  time.  But  a  difference 
of  a  far  more  startling  kind  than  these  lay  in  the  presence  of 
the  clergy.  If  there  is  any  part  in  the  Parliamentary  scheme 
of  Edward  the  First  which  can  be  regarded  as  especially  his 
own,  it  is  his  project  for  the  representation  of  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal order.  The  king  had  twice  at  least  summoned  its  "  proc- 
tors" to  Great  Councils  before  1295,  but  it  was  then  only 


228  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

that  the  complete  representation  of  the  Church  was  definitely 
organized  by  the  insertion  of  a  clause  in  the  writ  which 
summoned  a  bishop  to  Parliament  requiring  the  personal  at- 
tendance of  all  archdeacons,  deans,  or  priors  of  cathedral 
churches,  of  a  proctor  for  each  cathedral  chapter,  and  two 
for  the  clergy  within  his  diocese.  The  clause  is  repeated  in 
the  writs  of  the  present  day,  but  its  practical  effect  was 
foiled  almost  from  the  first  by  the  resolute  opposition  of  those 
to  whom  it  was  addressed.  What  the  towns  failed  in  doing 
the  clergy  actually  did.  Even  when  forced  to  comply  with 
the  royal  summons,  as  they  seem  to  have  been  forced  during 
Edward's  reign,  they  sat  jealously  by  themselves,  and  their 
refusal  to  vote  supplies  in  any  but  their  own  provincial  as- 
semblies, or  convocations,  of  Canterbury  and  York  left  the 
crown  without  a  motive  for  insisting  on  their  continued  at- 
tendance. Their  presence  indeed,  though  still  occasionally 
granted  on  some  solemn  occasions,  became  so  pure  a  formality 
that  by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  it  had  sunk  wholly 
into  desuetude.  In  their  anxiety  to  preserve  their  existence 
as  an  isolated  and  privileged  order  the  clergy  flung  away  a 
power  which,  had  they  retained  it,  would  have  ruinously 
hampered  the  healthy  development  of  the  state.  To  take  a 
single  instance,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  great  changes  of 
the  Eeformation  could  have  been  brought  about  had  a  good 
half  of  the  House  of  Commons  consisted  purely  of  churchmen, 
whose  numbers  would  have  been  backed  by  the  weight  of 
property  as  possessors  of  a  third  of  the  landed  estates  of  the 
realm.  A  hardly  less  important  difference  may  be  found  in 
the  gradual  restriction  of  the  meetings  of  Parliament  to 
Westminster.  The  names  of  the  early  statutes  remind  us  of 
its  convocation  at  the  most  various  quarters,  at  Winchester, 
Acton  Burnell,  or  Northampton.  It  was  at  a  later  time  that 
Parliament  became  settled  in  the  straggling  village  which 
had  grown  up  in  the  marshy  swamp  of  the  Isle  of  Thorns, 
beside  the  palace  whose  embattled  pile  towered  over  the 
Thames  and  the  great  minister  which  was  still  rising  in 
Edward's  day  on  the  site  of  the  older  church  of  the  Confessor. 
It  is  possible  that,  while  contributing  greatly  to  its  consti- 
tutional importance,  this  settlement  of  the  Parliament  may 
have  helped  to  throw  into  the  background  its  character  as  a 
supreme  court  of  appeal.  The  proclamation  by  which  it  was 


THE   CONQUEST   OF   SCOTLAND.      1290  TO   1805.        229 

called  together  invited  "  all  who  had  any  grace  to  demand  of 
the  king  in  Parliament,  or  any  plaint  te  make  of  matters 
which  could  not  be  redressed  or  determined  by  ordinary 
course  of  law,  or  who  had  been  in  any  way  aggrieved  by  any 
of  the  king's  ministers  or  justices  or  sheriffs,  or  their  bailiffs, 
or  any  other  officer,  or  have  been  unduly  assessed,  rated, 
charged,  or  surcharged  to  aids,  subsidies,  or  taxes/'  to  deliver 
their  petitions  to  receivers  who  sat  in  the  Great  Hall  of  the 
Palace  of  Westminster.  The  petitions  were  forwarded  to 
the  King's  Council,  and  it  was  probably  the  extension  of  the 
jurisdiction  of  that  body,  and  the  subsequent  rise  of  the 
Court  of  Chancery,  which  reduced  this  ancient  right  of  the 
subject  to  the  formal  election  of  "  Triers  of  Petitions  "  at 
the  opening  of  every  new  Parliament  by  the  House  of  Lords, 
a  usage  which  is  still  continued.  But  it  must  have  been 
owing  to  some  memory  of  the  older  custom  that  the  subject 
always  looked  for  redress  against  injuries  from  the  crown 
or  its  ministers  to  the  Parliament  of  the  realm. 

Section  III.— The  Conquest  of  Scotland.     1290—1305. 

[Authorities. — Scotland  itself  lias  no  contemporary  chronicles  for  this  period: 
the  jingling  rimes  of  Blind  Harry  are  two  hundred  years  later  than  the  death 
of  his  hero,  Wallace.  Those  of  England  are  meager  and  inaccurate ;  the  most 
important  are  the  "  Annales  Angliae  et  Scotise  "  and  "  Annales  Regni  Scotise  " 
Rishanger's  Chronicle,  his  "  Gesta  Edwardi  Primi,"  and  three  fragments  of  an- 
nals (all  published  in  the  Rolls  Series).  The  portion  of  the  so-called  Walsing- 
ham's  History  which  relates  to  this  time  is  now  attributed  by  its  latest  editor  Mr. 
Riley,  to  Rishanger's  hand.  But  the  main  source  of  our  information  lies  in  the 
copious  collection  of  state  papers  preserved  in  Rymer's  "  Fcedera,"  in  the  "  Rotulj 
Scotise,"  and  in  the  "  Documents  and  Records  illustrative  of  the  History  of  Scot- 
land," edited  by  Sir  F.  Palgrave.  Mr.  Robertson,  in  his  "  Scotland  under  her 
Early  Kings,"  has  admirably  illustrated  the  ages  before  the  quarrel,  and  Mr. 
Burton  in  his  History  of  Scotland  has  stated  the  quarrel  itself  with  great  ac- 
curacy and  fairness.  For  Edward's  side  see  the  preface  of  Sir  F.  Palgrave  to 
the  work  above,  and  Mr.  Freeman's  essay  on  "  The  Relations  between  the  Crowns 
of  England  and  Scotland."] 

The  personal  character  of  Edward  the  First  had  borne 
a  large  part  in  the  constitutional  changes  which  we  have 
described,  but  it  becomes  of  the  highest  moment  during  the 
war  with  Scotland  which  covers,  the  latter  half  of  his  reign. 

In  his  own  time,  and  amongst  his  own  subjects,  Edward 
was  the  object  of  almost  boundless  admiration.     He  was  in 
the  truest  sense  a  national  king.     At  the  moment 
when   the  last  trace  of  foreign  conquest   passed  Edr the 
away,  when  the   descendants  of  those  who  won 


230  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

and  those  who  lost  at  Senlac  blended  for  ever  into  an  English 
people,  England  saw  in  her  ruler  no  stranger  but  an  English- 
man. The  national  tradition  returned  in  more  than  the  golden 
hair  or  the  English  name  which  linked  him  to  our  earlier 
kings.  Edward's  very  temper  was  English  to  the  core.  In 
good  as  in  evil  he  stands  out  as  the  typical  representative  of 
the  race  he  ruled,  like  them  wilful  and  imperious,  tenacious 
of  his  rights,  indomitable  in  his  pride,  dogged,  stubborn,  slow 
of  apprehension,  narrow  in  sympathy,  but  like  them,  too,  just 
in  the  main,  unselfish,  laborious,  conscientious,  haughtily 
observant  of  truth  and  self-respect,  temperate,  reverent  of 
duty,  religious.  He  inherited  indeed  from  the  Angevins 
their  fierce  and  passionate  wrath  ;  his  punishments,  when 
he  punished  in  anger,  were  without  pity  ;  and  a  priest  who 
ventured  at  a  moment  of  storm  into  his  presence  with  a 
remonstrance  dropped  dead  from  sheer  fright  at  his  feet. 
But  for  the  most  part  his  impulses  were  generous,  trustful, 
averse  from  cruelty,  prone  to  forgiveness.  "  No  man  ever 
asked  mercy  of  me,"  he  said  in  his  old  age,  "and  was 
refused."  The  rough  soldierly  nobleness  of  his  nature 
breaks  out  at  Falkirk,  where  he  lay  on  the  bare  ground 
among  his  men,  or  in  his  refusal  during  a  Welsh  campaign 
to  drink  of  the  one  cask  of  wine  which  had  been  saved  from 
marauders  :  ' '  It  is  I  who  have  brought  you  into  this  strait," 
he  said  to  his  thirsty  fellow-soldiers,  "  and  I  will  have  no 
advantage  of  you  in  meat  or  drink."  A  strange  tenderness 
and  sensitiveness  to  affection  lay  in  fact  beneath  the  stern 
imperiousness  of  his  outer  bearing.  Every  subject  through- 
out his  realm  was  drawn  closer  to  the  king  who  wept  bit- 
terly at  the  news  of  his  father's  death,  though  it  gave  him  a 
crown ;  whose  fiercest  burst  of  vengeance  was  called  out  by 
an  insult  to  his  mother  ;  whose  crosses  rose  as  memorials  of 
his  love  and  sorrow  at  every  spot  where  his  wife's  bier  rested. 
"  I  loved  her  tenderly  in  her  lifetime,"  wrote  Edward  to 
Eleanor's  friend,  the  Abbot  of  Cluny ;  "  I  do  not  cease  to 
love  her  now  she  is  dead."  And  as  it  was  with  mother  and 
wife,  so  it  was  with  his  people  at  large.  All  the  self- 
concentrated  isolation  of  the  earlier  Angevins  disappears  in 
Edward.  He  was  the  first  English  king  since  the  Conquest 
who  loved  his  people  with  a  personal  love,  and  craved  for 
their  love  back  again.  To  his  trust  in  them  we  owe  our 


THE   CONQUEST   OF   SCOTLAND.      1290   TO   1305.        231 

Parliament,  to  his  care  for  them  the  great  statutes  which 
stand  in  the  forefront  of  our  laws.  Even  in  his  struggles 
with  her  England  understood  a  temper  which  was  so  perfectly 
her  own,  and  the  quarrels  between  king  and  people  during 
his  reign  are  quarrels  where,  doggedly  as  they  fought, 
neither  disputant  doubted  for  a  moment  the  worth  or  af- 
fection of  the  other.  Few  scenes  in  our  history  are  more 
touching  than  that  which  closes  the  long  contest  over  the 
Charter,  when  Edward  stood  face  to  face  with  his  people  in 
Westminster  Hall,  and  with  a  sudden  burst  of  tears  owned 
himself  frankly  in  the  wrong. 

But  it  was  just  this  sensitiveness,  this  openness  to  outer 
impressions  and  outer  influences,  that  led  to  the  strange 
contradictions  which  meet  us  in  Edward's  career. 
Under  the  first  king  whose  temper  was  distinctly 
English  a  foreign  influence  told  most  fatally  on 
our  manners,  our  literature,  our  national  spirit.  The  rise 
of  France  into  a  compact  and  organized  monarchy  from  the 
time  of  Philip  Augustus  was  now  making  its  influence 
dominant  in  western  Europe.  The  "  chivalry  "  so  familiar 
in  Froissart,  that  picturesque  mimicry  of  high  sentiment,  of 
heroism,  love,  and  courtesy,  before  which  all  depth  and 
reality  of  nobleness  disappeared  to  make  room  for  the 
coarsest  profligacy,  the  narrowest  cast-spirit,  and  a  brutal 
indifference  to  human  suffering,  was  specially  of  French 
creation.  There  was  a  nobleness  in  Edward's  nature  from 
which  the  baser  influences  of  this  chivalry  fell  away.  His 
life  was  pure,  his  piety,  save  when  it  stooped  to  the  supersti- 
tion of  the  time,  manly  and  sincere,  while  his  high  sense  of 
duty  saved  him  from  the  frivolous  self-indulgence  of  his 
successors.  But  he  was  far  from  being  wholly  free  from  the 
taint  of  his  age.  His  passionate  desire  was  to  be  a  model 
of  the  fashionable  chivalry  of  his  day.  He  had  been  famous 
from  his  very  youth  as  a  consummate  general ;  Earl  Simon 
had  admired  the  skill  of  his  advance  at  Evesham,  and  in  his 
Welsh  campaign  he  had  shown  a  tenacity  and  force  of  will 
which  wrested  victory  out  of  the  midst  of  defeat.  He 
could  head  a  furious  charge  of  horse  at  Lewes,  or  organize  a 
commissariat  which  enabled  him  to  move  army  after  army 
across  the  harried  Lowlands.  In  his  old  age  he  was  quick 
to  discover  the  value  of  the  English  archery,  and  to  em- 


232  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ploy  it  as  a  means  of  victory  at  Falkirk.  But  his  fame  as  a 
general  seemed  a  small  thing  to  Edward  when  compared  with 
his  fame  as  a  knight.  He  shared  to  the  full  his  people's 
love  of  hard  fighting.  His  frame,  indeed,  was  that  of  a 
born  soldier — tall,  deep-chested,  long  of  limb,  capable  alike 
of  endurance  or  action.  When  he  encountered  Adam 
Gurdon,  a  knight  of  gigantic  size  and  renowned  prowess, 
after  Evesham  he  forced  him  singlehanded  to  beg  for 
mercy.  At  the  opening  of  his  reign  he  saved  his  life  by 
sheer  fighting  in  a  tournament  at  Ohallon.  It  was  this  love 
of  adventure  which  lent  itself  to  the  frivolous  unreality 
of  the  new  chivalry.  At  his  "  Round  Table  of  Kenilworth  " 
a  hundred  lords  and  ladies,  "  clad  all  in  silk,"  renewed 
the  faded  glories  of  Arthur's  Court.  The  false  air  of 
romance  which  was  soon  to  turn  the  gravest  political  res- 
olutions into  outbursts  of  sentimental  feeling  appeared 
in  his  "  Vow  of  the  Swan/'  when  rising  at  the  royal 
board  he  swore  on  the  dish  before  him  to  avenge  on 
Scotland  the  murder  of  Comyn.  Chivalry  exerted,  on  him  a 
yet  more  fatal  influence  in  its  narrowing  of  his  sympathy  to 
the  noble  class,  and  in  its  exclusion  of  the  peasant  and  the 
craftsman  from  all  claim  to  pity.  "  Knight  without 
reproach"  as  he  was,  he  looked  calmly  on  at  the  massacre 
of  the  burghers  of  Berwick,  and  saw  in  William  Wallace 
nothing  but  a  common  robber. 

Hardly  less  powerful  than  the  French  notion  of  chivalry 
in  its  influence  on  Edward's  mind  was  the  new  French  con- 
ception of  kingship,  feudality,  and  law.  The  rise 
legality  °^  a  ^awyer  c^ass  was  everywhere  hardening  cus- 
tomary into  written  rights,  allegiance  into  subjec- 
tion, loose  ties  such  as  commendation  into  a  definite  vas- 
salage. But  it  was  specially  through  French  influence,  the 
influence  of  St.  Lewis  and  his  successors,  that  the  imperial 
theories  of  the  Roman  Law  were  brought  to  bear  upon  this 
natural  tendency  of  the  time.  When  the  "sacred  majesty" 
of  the  Csesars  was  transferred  by  a  legal  fiction  to  the  royal 
head  of  a  feudal  baronage,  every  constitutional  relation  was 
changed.  The  "defiance"  by  which  a  vassal  renounced  ser- 
vice to  his  lord  became  treason,  his  after  resistance  "  sacri- 
lege." That  Edward  could  appreciate  what  was  sound  and 
noble  in  the  legal  spirit  around  him  was  shown  in  his  reforms 


THE   CONQUEST   OF   SCOTLAND.      1290   TO   1305.        233 

of  our  judicature  and  our  Parliament ;  but  there  was  some- 
thing as  congenial  to  his  mind  in  its  definiteness,  its  rigidity, 
its  narrow  technicalities.  He  was  never  wilfully  unjust,  but 
he  was  too  often  captious  in  his  justice,  fond  of  legal  chi- 
canery, prompt  to  take  advantage  of  the  letter  of  the  law. 
The  high  conception  of  royalty  which  he  had  borrowed  from 
St.  Lewis  united  with  this  legal  turn  of  -mind  in  the  worst 
acts  of  his  reign.  Of  rights  or  liberties  unregistered  in 
charter  or  roll  Edward  would  know  nothing,  while  his  own 
good  sense  was  overpowered  by  the  majesty  of  his  crown.  It 
was  incredible  to  him  that  Scotland  should  revolt  against  a 
legal  bargain  which  made  her  national  independence  condi- 
tional on  the  terms  extorted  from  a  claimant  of  her  throne  ; 
nor  could  he  view  in  any  other  light  but  as  treason  the  re- 
sistance of  his  own  baronage  to  an  arbitrary  taxation  which 
their  fathers  had  borne.  It  is  in  the  very  anomalies  of  such 
a  character,  in  its  strange  union  of  justice  and  wrong-doing, 
of  nobleness  and  meanness,  that  we  must  look  for  any  fair 
explanation  of  much  that  has  since  been  bitterly  blamed  in 
Edward's  conduct  and  policy. 

Fairly  to  understand  his  quarrel  with  the  Scots,  we  must 
clear  our  minds  of  the  ideas  which  we  now  associate  with  the 
words  "  Scotland/'  or  the  "Scotch  people."  At 
the  opening  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  king-  Scotland, 
dom  of  the  Scots  was  composed  of  four  districts, 
each  of  which  had  originally  its  different  people,  its  different 
speech,  or  at  least  dialect,  and  its  different  history.  The 
first  of  these  was  the  Lowland  district,  at  one  time  called 
Saxony,  and  which  now  bears  the  name  of  Lothian  and  the 
Merse  (or  border  land),  the  space,  roughly  speaking,  between 
the  Forth  and  Tweed.  "We  have  seen  that  at  the  close  of 
the  English  conquest  of  Britain  the  kingdom  of  Northum- 
bria  stretched  from  the  H umber  to  the  Firth  of  Forth,  and 
of  this  kingdom  the  Lowlands  formed  simply  the  northern 
portion.  The  English  conquest  and  the  English  coloniza- 
tion were  as  complete  here  as  over  the  rest  of  Britain. 
Rivers  and  hills  indeed  retained  their  Celtic  names,  but  the 
"tons"  and  "hams"  scattered  over  the  country  told  the 
story  of  its  Teutonic  settlement.  Livings  and  Dodings  left 
their  names  to  Livingstone  and  Duddingstone  ;  Elphinstone, 
Dolphinstone  and  Edmundstone  preserved  the  memory  of 


284  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

English  Elphins,  Dolphins,  and  Edmunds,  who  had  raised 
their  homesteads  beyond  the  Teviot  and  the  Tweed.  To  the 
northward  and  westward  of  this  Northumbrian  land  lay  the 
kingdoms  of  the  conquered.  Over  the  "Waste"  or  "Des- 
ert"—  the  range  of  barren  moors  which  stretches  from 
Derbyshire  to  the  Cheviots — the  Briton  had  sought  a  refuge 
in  the  long  strip  of  coast  between  the  Clyde  and  the  Dee 
which  formed  the  earlier  Cumbria.  Against  this  kingdom 
the  efforts  of  the  Northumbrian  rulers  had  been  incessantly 
directed ;  the  victory  of  Chester  had  severed  it  from  the 
Welsh  kingdoms  to  the  south  ; .  Lancashire,  Westmoreland, 
and  Cumberland  were  already  subdued  by  the  time  of  Ecg- 
frith  ;  while  the  fragment  which  was  suffered  to  remain  un- 
conquered  between  the  Firths  of  Solway  and  of  Clyde,  and  to 
which  the  name  of  Cumbria  is  in  its  later  use  confined, 
owned  the  English  supremacy.  At  the  close  of  the  seventh 
century  it  seemed  likely  that  the  same  supremacy  would  ex- 
tend over  the  Celtic  tribes  to  the  north.  The  district  north 
of  the  Clyde  and  Forth  was  originally  inhabited  chiefly  by 
the  Picts,  a  Latin  name  for  the  people  who  seem  to  have 
called  themselves  the  Cruithne.  To  these  Highlanders  the 
country  south  of  the  Forth  was  a  foreign  land,  and  significant 
entries  in  their  rude  chronicles  tell  us  how  in  their  forays 
"the  Picts  made  a  raid  upon  Saxony."  But  during  the 
period  of  Northumbrian  greatness  they  had  begun  to  yield  at 
least  on  their  borders  some  kind  of  submission  to  its  kings. 
Eadwine  had  built  a  fort  at  Dunedin,  which  became  Edin- 
burgh and  looked  menacingly  across  the  Forth  ;  and  at  Aber- 
corn  beside  it  was  established  an  English  prelate  with  the 
title  of  Bishop  of  the  Picts.  Ecgfrith,  in  whose  hands  the 
power  of  Northumbria  reached  its  highest  point,  marched 
across  the  Forth  to  change  this  overlordship  into  a  direct 
dominion,  and  to  bring  the  series  of  English  victories  to  a 
close.  His  host  poured  burning  and  ravaging  across  the 
Tay,  and  skirted  the  base  of  the  Grampians  as  far  as  the 
field  of  Nectansmere,  where  King  Bruidi  awaited  them  at 
the  head  of  the  Picts.  The  great  battle  which  followed 
proved  a  turning-point  in  the  history  of  the  north  ;  the  in- 
vaders were  cut  to  pieces,  Ecgfrith  himself  being  among  the 
elain,  and  the  power  of  Northumbria  was  broken  forever. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  kingdom  of  the  Picts  started  into 


THE   CONQUEST   OF   SCOTLAND.      1290   TO    1305.       235 

new  life  with  its  great  victory,  and  pushed  its  way  in  the 
hundred  years  that  followed  westward,  eastward,  and  south- 
ward, till  the  whole  country  north  of  the  Forth  and  the 
Clyde  acknowledged  its  supremacy.  But  the  hour  of  Pictish 
greatness  was  marked  by  the  sudden  extinction  of  the  Pictish 
name.  Centuries  before,  when  the  English  invaders  were 
beginning  to  harry  the  south  coast  of  Britain,  a  fleet  of 
coracles  had  borne  a  tribe  of  the  Scots,  as  the  inhabitants  of 
Ireland  were  at  that  time  called,  from  the  black  cliff-walls  of 
Antrim  to  the  rocky  and  indented  coast  of  South  Argyle. 
The  little  kingdom  of  Scotland  which  these  Irish mer 
founded  slumbered  in  obscurity  among  the  lakes  and  moun- 
tains to  the  south  of  Loch  Linnhe,  now  submitting  to  the 
over-lordship  of  North umbria,  now  to  that  of  the  Picts,  till 
the  extinction  of  the  direct  Pictish  line  of  sovereigns  raised 
the  Scotch  king,  Kenneth  Mac-Alpin,who  chanced  to  be  their 
nearest  kinsman,  to  the  vacant  throne.  For  fifty  years  these 
rulers  of  Scottish  blood  still  call  themselves  "  kings  of  tho 
Picts  ;  "  but  with  the  opening  of  the  tenth  century  the  ver- 
name  passes  away,  the  tribe  which  had  given  its  chief  to  the 
common  throne  gives  its  designation  to  the  common  realm, 
and  "  Pict-land  "  vanishes  from  the  page  of  the  chronicler 
or  annalist  to  make  way  for  the  "  land  of  the  Scots." 

It  was  even  longer  before  the  change  made  way  among  the 
people  itself,  and  the  real  union  of  the  nation  with  its  kings 
was  only  effected  by  the  common  suffering  of  the  Danish 
wars.  In  the  north,  as  in  the  south  of  Britain,  the  invasion 
of  the  Danes  brought  about  political  unity.  Not  only  were 
Picts  and  Scots  thoroughly  blended  into  a  single  people, 
but  by  the  annexation  of  Cumbria  and  the  Lowlands,  their 
monarchs  became  rulers  of  the  territory  which  we  now  cull 
Scotland.  The  annexation  was  owing  to  the  new  policy  of 
the  English  kings.  Their  aim,  after  the  long  struggle  of 
England  with  the  northmen,  was  no  longer  to  crush  the 
kingdom  across  the  Forth,  but  to  raise  it  into  a  bulwark 
against  the  northmen  who  were  still  settled  in  Caithness  and 
the  Orkneys,  and  for  whose  aggressions  Scotland  was  the 
natural  highway.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  only  in  English 
aid  that  the  Scot  kings  could  find  a  support  for  their  throne 
against  these  Nor3e  Jarls  of  Orkney  and  Caithness.  It  was 
probably  this  common  hostility  to  a  common  foe  which 


286  HISTORY  OP   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

brought  about  the  "  commendation  "  by  which  the  Scots  be- 
yond the  Forth,  with  the  Welsh  of  Strath-clyde,  chose  the 
English  king,  Eadward  the  Elder,  "  to  father  and  lord." 
The  choice,  whatever  weight  after  events  may  have  given  to 
it,  seems  to  have  been  little  more  than  the  renewal  of  the 
loose  English  supremacy  over  the  tribes  of  the  north  which 
had  existed  during  the  times  of  Northumbrian  greatness  ;  it 
certainly  implied  at  the  time  nothing  save  a  right  on  either 
side  to  military  aid,  though  the  aid  then  rendered  was  neces- 
sarily placed  in  the  hands  of  the  stronger  party  to  the  agree- 
ment. Such  a  connection  naturally  ceased  in  the  event  of 
any  war  between  the  two  contracting  parties  ;  it  was  in  fact 
by  no  means  the  feudal  vassalage  of  a  later  time,  but  rather 
a  military  convention.  But  loose  as  was  the  tie  which  bound 
the  two  countries,  a  closer  tie  soon  bound  the  Scot  king 
himself  to  his  English  overlord.  Strath-clyde,  which,  after 
the  defeat  of  Nectansmere,  had  shaken  off  the  English  yoke, 
and  which  at  a  later  time  had  owned  the  supremacy  of  the 
Scots,  rose  into  a  temporary  independence  only  to  be  con- 
quered by  the  English  Eadmund.  By  him  it  was  granted  to 
Malcolm  of  Scotland  on  condition  that  he  should  become  his 
"  fellow- worker"  both  by  land  and  sea,  and  became  from 
that  time  the  appanage  of  the  eldest  son  of  the  Scottish  king. 
At  a  later  time,  under  Eadgar  or  Cnut,  the  whole  of  Northern 
Northumbria,  or  what  we  now  call  the  Lothians,  was  ceded 
to  the  Scottish  sovereigns,  but  whether  on  the  same  terms 
of  feudal  dependence  or  on  the  same  loose  terms  of  "com- 
mendation "  as  already  existed  for  lands  north  of  the  Forth, 
we  have  no  means  of  deciding.  The  retreat,  however,  of  the 
bounds  of  the  great  English  bishopric  of  the  north,  t'he  see 
of  St.  Cuthbert,  as  far  southward  as  the  Pentland  Hills, 
would  seem  to  imply  a  greater  change  in  the  political  char- 
acter of  the  ceded  district  than  the  first  theory  would  allow. 
Whatever  change  these  cessions  may  have  brought  about 
in  the  relation  of  the  Scottish  to  the  English  kings,  they 
England  certainly  affected  in  a  very  marked  way  their  rela- 
and  the  tion  both  to  England  and  to  their  own  realm. 
Scot  Kings.  Qne  resuit  Of  the  acquisition  of  the  Lowlands  was 
the  ultimate  fixing  of  the  royal  residence  in  their  new 
southern  dominion  at  Edinburgh  ;  and  the  English  civiliza- 
tion with  which  they  were  then  surrounded  changed  the  Scot 


THE   CONQUEST   OF   SCOTLAND.      1290   TO   1305.        237 

kings  in  all  but  blood  into  Englishmen.  A  way  soon  opened 
itself  to  the  English  crown  by  the  marriage  of  Malcolm  with 
Margaret,  the  sister  of  Eadgar  ^Etheling.  Their  children 
were  regarded  by  a  large  party  within  England  as  representa- 
tives of  the  older  royal  race  and  as  claimants  of  the  throne, 
and  this  danger  grew  as  William's  devastation  of  the  north 
not  only  drove  fresh  multitudes  of  Englishmen  to  settle  in 
the  Lowlands,  but  filled  the  Scotch  court  with  English  nobles 
who  fled  thither  for  refuge.  So  formidable,  indeed,  became 
the  pretensions  of  the  Scot  kings,  that  they  forced  the  ablest 
of  our  Norman  sovereigns  into  a  complete  change  of  policy. 
The  Conqueror  and  William  the  Eed  had  met  the  threats  of 
the  Scot  sovereigns  by  invasions  which  ended  again  and 
again  in  an  illusory  homage  ;  but  the  marriage  of  Henry  the 
First  with  the  Scottish  Matilda  not  only  robbed  the  claims 
of  the  Scottish  line  of  much  of  their  force,  but  enabled  him 
to  draw  it  into  far  closer  relations  with  the  Norman  throne. 
King  David  not  only  abandoned  the  ambitious  dreams  of  his 
predecessors  to  place  himself  later  at  the  head  of  his  niece 
Matilda's  party  in  her  contest  with  Stephen,  but  as  Henry's 
brother-in-law  he  figured  as  the  first  noble  of  the  English 
court,  and  found  English  models  and  English  support  in  the 
work  of  organization  which  he  attempted  within  his  own 
dominions.  As  the  marriage  with  Margaret  had  changed 
Malcolm  from  a  Celtic  chieftain  into  an  English  king, 
so  that  of  Matilda  converted  David  into  a  Norman  and  feudal 
sovereign.  His  court  was  filled  with  Norman  nobles  from 
the  south,  such  as  the  Balliols  and  Bruces  who  were  destined 
to  play  so  great  a  part  afterwards  but  who  now  for  the  first 
time  obtained  fiefs  in  the  Scottish  realm  ;  and  a  feudal  juris- 
prudence modeled  on  that  of  England  was  introduced  into 
the  Lowlands.  A  fresh  connection  between  the  countries 
began  with  the  grant  of  lordships  in  England  to  the  Scot 
kings  or  their  sons.  Homage  was  sometimes  rendered, 
whether  for  these  lordships,  for  the  Lowlands,  or  for  the 
whole  Scottish  realm,  but  it  was  the  capture  of  William  the 
Lion  during  the  revolt  of  the  English  baronage  which  sug- 
gested to  Henry  the  Second  the  project  of  a  closer  depend- 
ence of  Scotland  on  the  English  crown.  To  gain  his  free-" 
dom,  William  consented  to  hold  his  crown  of  Henry  and  his 
heirs,  the  prelates  and  lords  of  the  Scotch  kingdom  did  horn- 


•J38  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

age  to  Henry  as  to  their  direct  lord,  and  a  right  of  appeal  in 
all  Scotch  causes  was  allowed  to  the  superior  court  of  the 
English  suzerain.  From  this  bondage,  however,  Scotland 
was  soon  freed  by  the  prodigality  of  Eichard,  who  allowed 
her  to  buy  back  the  freedom  she  had  forfeited,  and  from  that 
time  the  difficulties  of  the  older  claim  were  evaded  by  a  legal 
compromise.  The  Scot  kings  repeatedly  did  homage  to  the 
English  sovereign,  but  with  a  reservation  -of  rights  which 
were  prudently  left  unspecified.  The  English  king  accepted 
the  homage  on  the  assumption  that  it  was  rendered  to  him 
as  overlord  of  the  Scottish  realm,  and  this  assumption  was 
neither  granted  nor  denied.  For  nearly  a  hundred  years  the 
relations  of  the  two  countries  were  thus  kept  peaceful  and 
friendly,  and  the  death  of  Alexander  the  Third  seemed  des- 
tined to  remove  even  the  necessity  of  protests  by  a  closer 
union  of  the  two  kingdoms.  Alexander  had  wedded  his  only 
daughter  to  the  king  of  Norway,  and  after  long  negotiation 
the  Scotch  Parliament  proposed  the  marriage  of  her  child 
Margaret,  "the  Maid  of  Norway/'  with  the  son  of  Edward 
the  First.  It  was,  however,  carefully  provided  in  the  mar- 
riage treaty  of  Brigham  that  Scotland  should  remain  a  sepa- 
rate and  free  kingdom,  and  that  its  laws  and  customs  should 
be  preserved  inviolate.  No  military  aid  was  to  be  claimed 
by  the  English  king,  no  Scotch  appeal  to  be  carried  to  an 
English  court.  But  this  project  was  abruptly  frustrated  by 
the  child's  death  on  her  voyage  to  Scotland,  and  with  the 
rise  of  claimant  after  claimant  of  the  vacant  throne  Edward 
was  drawn  into  far  other  relations  to  the  Scottish  realm. 

Of  the  thirteen  pretenders  to  the  throne  of  Scotland,  only 
three  could  bo  regarded  as  serious  claimants.     By  the  ex- 
tinction of  the  line  of  William  the  Lion  the  right 
The  First    oj?  succession  passed  to  the  daughters  of  his  brother 
David.     The  claim  of  John  Balliol,  Lord  of  Gal- 
loway, rested  on  his  descent  from  the  eldest  of  these  ;  that  of 
Kobert  Bruce,  Lord  of  Annandale,  on  his  descent  from  the 
second  ;  that  of  John  Hastings,  Lord  of  Abergavenny,  on  his 
descent  from  the  third.     At  this  crisis  the  Norwegian  king, 
the  Primate  of  St.  Andrew's,  and  seven  of  the  Scotch  earls, 
had  already  appealed  to  Edward  before  Margaret's  death ; 
and  the  death  itself  was  followed  by  the  consent  both  of  the 
claimants  and  the  Council  of  Begency  to  refer  the  question 


THE   CONQUEST    OF    SCOTLAND.       1290    TO    1305.       239 

of  the  succession  to  his  decision  in  a  Parliament  at  Norham. 
But  the  overlordship  which  the  Scots  acknowledged  was 
something  far  less  direct  and  definite  than  what  Edward 
claimed  at  the  opening  of  this  conference.  His  claim  was 
supported  by  excerpts  from  English  monastic  chronicles,  and 
by  the  slow  advance  of  an  English  army,  while  the  Scotch 
lords,  taken  by  surprise,  found  little  help  in  the  delay  which 
was  granted  them,  and  at  last,  in  common  with  nine  of  the 
claimants  themselves,  formally  admitted  Edward's  direct 
suzerainty.  To  the  nobles,  in  fact,  the  concession  must  have 
seemed  a  small  one,  for  like  the  principal  claimants  they  were 
for  the  most  part  Norman  in  blood,  with  estates  in  both 
countries,  and  looking  for  honors  and  pensions  from  the 
English  Court.  From  the  Commons  who  were  gathered  with 
the  nobles  at  Norham  no  admission  of  Edward's  claims  could 
be  extorted  ;  but  in  Scotland,  feudalized  as  it  had  been  by 
David,  the  Commons  were  as  yet  of  little  weight,  and  their 
opposition  was  quietly  passed  by.  All  the  rights  of  a  feudal 
suzerain  were  at  once  assumed  by  the  English  king  ;  he  en- 
tered into  the  possession  of  the  country  as  into  that  of  a  dis- 
puted fief  to  be  held  by  its  overlord  till  the  dispute  was 
settled,  his  peace  was  sworn  throughout  the  land,  its  castles 
delivered  into  his  charge,  while  its  bishops  and  nobles  swore 
homage  to  him  directly  as  their  lord  superior.  Scotland  was 
thus  reduced  to  the  subjection  which  she  had  experienced 
under  Henry  the  Second,  but  the  full  discussion  which  fol- 
lowed over  the  various  claims  to  the  throne  showed  that, 
while  exacting  to  the  full  what  he  believed  to  be  his  right, 
Edward  desired  to  do  justice  to  the  country  itself.  The 
commissioners  whom  he  named  to  report  on  the  claims  to 
the  throne  were  mainly  Scotch  ;  a  proposal  for  the  partition 
of  the  realm  among  the  claimants  was  rejected  as  contrary 
to  Scotch  law";  and  the  claim  of  Balliol  as  representative  of 
the  elder  branch  was  finally  preferred  to  that  of  his  rivals. 

The  castles  were  at  once  delivered  to  the  new  monarch,  and 
Balliol  did  homage  to  Edward  with  full  acknowledgment 
of  the  services  due  to  him  from  the  realm  of  Scotland.  For 
a  time  there  was  peace.  Edward  in  fact  seemed  to  have  no 
desire  to  push  further  the  rights  of  his  crown.  Even  allow- 
ing that  Scotland  was  a  dependent  kingdom,  it  was  far  from 
being  an  ordinary  fief  of  the  English  crown.  By  feudal  cus- 


240  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

torn  a  distinction  had  always  been  held  to  exist  between  the 
relations  of  a  dependent  king  to  a  superior  lord  and  those  of 
a  vassal  noble  to  his  sovereign.  At  Balliol's  homage  Edward 
had  disclaimed,  in  strict  accordance  with  the  marriage  treaty 
of  Brigham,  any  right  to  the  ordinary  incidents  of  a  fief, 
those  of  worship  or  marriage  ;  but  there  were  other  customs 
of  the  realm  of  Scotland  as  incontestable  as  these.  The  Scot 
king  had  never  been  held  bound  to  attend  the  council  of  the 
English  baronage,  to  do  service  in  English  warfare,  or  to 
contribute  on  the  part  of  his  Scotch  realm  to  English  aids. 
No  express  acknowledgment  of  these  rights  had  been  given 
by  Edward,  but  for  a  time  they  were  practically  observed. 
The  claim  of  independent  justice  was  more  doubtful,  as  it 
was  of  higher  import  than  these.  It  was  certain  that  no 
appeal  from  a  Scotch  king's  court  to  that  of  his  supposed 
overlord  had  been  allowed  since  the  days  of  William  the 
Lion,  and  the  judicial  independence  of  Scotland  had  been 
expressly  reserved  in  the  marriage  treaty.  But  in  feudal 
jurisprudence  the  right  of  ultimate  appeal  was  the  test  of 
sovereignty.  This  right  of  appeal  Edward  now  determined 
to  enforce,  and  Balliol  at  first  gave  way.  It  was  alleged, 
however,  that  the  resentment  of  his  baronage  and  people 
forced  him  to  resist ;  and' while  appearing  formally  at  West- 
minster he  refused  to  answer  an  appeal  save  by  advice  of  his 
Council.  He  was  in  fact  looking  to  France,  which,  as  we 
shall  afterwards  see,  was  jealously  watching  Edward's  pro- 
ceedings, and  ready  to  force  him  into  war.  By  a  new  breach 
of  customary  law  Edward  summoned  the  Scotch  nobles  to 
follow  him  in  arms  against  this  foreign  foe.  But  the  sum- 
mons was  disregarded,  and  a  second  and  formal  refusal  of  aid 
was  followed  by  a  secret  alliance  with  France  and  by  a  Papal 
absolution  of  Balliol  from  his  oath  of  fealty. 

Edward  was  still  reluctant  to  begin  the  war,  when  all  hope 
of  accommodation  was  ended  by  the  refusal  of  Balliol  to 
attend  his  Parliament  at  Newcastle,  the  rout  of  a  small  body 
of  English  troops,  and  the  investment  of  Carlisle  by  the  Scots. 
Orders  were  at  once  given  for  an  advance  upon  Berwick. 
The  taunts  of  its  citizens  stung  the  king  to  the  quick. 
"  Kynge  Edward,  waune  thou  havest  Berwick,  pike  thee ; 
waune  thou  havest  geten,  dike  thee,"  they  shouted  from 
behind  the  wooden  stockade,  which  formed  the  only  rampart 


THE   CONQUEST   OF   SCOTLAND.      1290   TO   1305.      241 

of  the  town.  But  the  stockade  was  stormed  with  the  loss 
of  a  single  knight,  and  nearly  eight  thousand  of  the  citizens 
were  mown  down  in  a  ruthless  carnage,  while  a  handful  of 
Flemish  traders  who  held  the  town-hall  stoutly  against  all 
assailants  were  burned  alive  in  it.  The  massacre  only  ceased 
when  a  procession  of  priests  bore  the  host  to  the  king's 
presence,  praying  for  mercy,  and  Edward  with  a  sudden  and 
characteristic  burst  of  tears  called  off  his  troops  ;  but  the 
town  was  ruined  forever,  and  the  great  merchant  city  of  the 
north  sank  from  that  time  into  a  petty  seaport.  At  Berwick 
Edward  received  Balliol's  defiance.  "  Has  the  fool  done 
this  folly?"  the  king  cried  in  haughty  scorn.  "If  he  will 
not  come  to  us,  we  will  come  to  him."  The  terrible  slaughter, 
however,  had  clone  its  work,  and  his  march  was  a  triumphal 
progress.  Edinburgh,  Stirling,  and  Perth  opened  their 
gates,  Bruce  joined  the  English  army,  and  Balliol  himself 
surrendered  and  passed  without  a  blow  from  his  throne  to 
an  English  prison.  No  further  punishment,  however,  was 
exacted  from  the  prostrate  realm.  Edward  simply  treated 
it  as  a  fief,  and  declared  its  forfeiture  to  be  the  legal  con- 
sequence of  Balliol's  treason.  It  lapsed  in  fact  to  the  over- 
lord, and  its  earls,  barons,  and  gentry  swore  homage  in  Parlia- 
ment at  Berwick  to  Edward  as  their  king.  The  sacred  stone 
on  which  its  older  sovereigns  had  been  installed,  an  oblong 
block  of  sandstone,  which  legend  asserted  to  have  been  the 
pillow  of  Jacob  as  angels  ascended  and  descended  upon  him, 
was  removed  from  Scone  and  placed  in  Westminster  by  the 
shrine  of  the  Confessor.  It  was  enclosed  by  Edward's  order 
in  a  stately  seat,  which  became  from  that  hour  the  coro- 
nation chair  of  English  kings. 

To  the  king  himself  the  whole  business  must  have  seemed 
another  and  easier  conquest  of  Wales,  and  the  mercy  and  just 
government  which  had  followed  his  first  success 
followed  his  second  also.  The  government  of  the 
new  dependency  was  entrusted  to  Warenne,  Earl  of 
Surrey,  at  the  head  of  an  English  Council  of  Regency.  Pardon 
was  freely  extended  to  all  who  had  resisted  the  invasion,  and 
order  and  public  peace' were  rigidly  enforced.  But  both  the 
justice  and  injustice  of  the  new  rule  proved  fatal  to  it ; 
the  wrath  of  the  Scots,  already  kindled  by  the  intrusion  of 
Knglish  priests  into  Scotch  livings,  and  by  the  grant  of  lands 
16 


242  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

across  the  border  to  English  barons,  was  fanned  to  fury  by 
the  strict  administration  of  law,  and  the  repression  of  feuds 
and  cattle-lifting.  The  disbanding,  too,  of  troops,  which  was 
caused  by  the  penury  of  the  royal  exchequer,  united  with 
the  license  of  the  soldiery  who  remained  to  quicken  the 
national  sense  of  wrong.  The  disgraceful  submission  of 
their  leaders  brought  the  people  themselves  to  the  front. 
In  spite  of  a  hundred  years  of  peace  the  farmer  of  the 
Lowlands  and  the  artisan  of  the  towns  remained  stout- 
hearted Northumbrian  Englishmen  ;  they  had  never  con- 
sented to  Edward's  supremacy,  and  their  blood  rose  against 
the  insolent  rule  of  the  stranger.  The  genius  of  an  outlaw 
knight,  William  Wallace,  saw  in  their  smoldering  discontent 
a  hope  of  freedom  for  his  country, and  his  daring  raids  on  out- 
lying parties  of  the  English  soldiery  roused  the  country  at 
last  into  revolt.  Of  Wallace  himself,  of  his  life  or  temper, 
we  know  little  or  nothing ;  the  very  traditions  of  his 
gigantic  stature  and  enormous  strength  are  dim  and  unhis- 
torical.  But  the  instinct  of  the  Scotch  people  has  guided  it 
aright  in  choosing  Wallace  for  its  national  hero.  He  was 
the  first  to  assert  freedom  as  a  national  birthright,  and 
amidst  the  despair  of  nobles  and  priests  to  call  the  people 
itself  to  arms.  At  the  head  of  an  army  drawn  principally 
from  the  coast  districts  north  of  the  Tay,  which  were  in- 
habited by  a  population  of  the  same  blood  as  that  of  the  Low- 
lands, Wallace,  in  September,  1297,  encamped  near  Stirling, 
the  pass  between  the  north  and  the  south,  and  awaited  the 
English  advance.  The  offers  of  John  of  Warenne  were  scorn- 
fully rejected:  "AVe  have  come,"  said  the  Scottish  leader, 
"  not  to  make  peace,  but  to  free  our  country."  The  position 
of  Wallace,  a  rise  of  hills  behind  a  loop  of  Forth,  was  in  fact 
chosen  with  consummate  skill.  The  one  bridge  which  crossed 
the  river  was  only  broad  enough  to  admit  two  horsemen 
abreast ;  and  though  the  English  army  had  been  passing 
from  daybreak,  only  half  its  force  was  across  at  noon  when 
Wallace  closed  on  it  and  cut  it  after  a  short  combat  to  pieces 
in  the  sight  of  its  comrades.  The  retreat  of  the  Earl  of 
Surrey  over  the  border  left  Wallace  head  of  the  country  he 
had  freed,  and  for  a  time  he  acted  as  "  Guardian  of  the 
Realm"  in  Balliol's  name,  and  headed  a  wild  foray  into 
Northumberland.  His  reduction  of  Stirling  Castle  at  last 


Till:   CONQUEST   OF   SCOTLAND.      1290    TO    loOo.       243 

called  Edward  to  the  field.  The  king,  who  inarched  north- 
ward with  a  larger  host  than  had  ever  followed  his  banner, 
was  enabled  by  treachery  to  surprise  Wallace,  as  he  fell  back 
to  avoid  an  engagement,  and  to  force  him  to  battle  near 
Falkirk.  The  Scotch  force  consisted  almost  wholly  of 
foot,  and  Wallace  drew  up  his  spearmen  in  four  great 
hollow  circles  or  squares,  the  outer  ranks  kneeling,  and 
the  whole  supported  by  bowmen  within,  while  a  small  force 
of  horse  were  drawn  up  as  a  reserve  in  the  rear.  It  was 
the  formation  of  Waterloo,  the  first  appearance  in  our 
history  since  the  day  of  Senlac  of  "  that  unconquerable 
British  infantry/'  before  which  chivalry  was  destined  to  go 
down.  For  a  moment  it  had  all  Waterloo's  success.  "  I 
have  brought  you  to  the  ring,  hop  (dance)  if  you  can," 
are  words  of  rough  humor  that  reveal  the  very  soul  of  the 
patriot  leader,  and  the  serried  ranks  answered  well  to  his 
appeal.  The  Bishop  of  Durham,  who  led  the  English 
van,  shrank  wisely  from  the  look  of  the  squares.  "Back 
to  your  mass,  Bishop,"  shouted  the  reckless  knights  be- 
hind him,  but  the  body  of  horse  dashed  itself  vainly  on  the 
wall  of  spears.  Terror  spread  through  the  English  army, 
and  its  Welsh  auxiliaries  drew  off  in  a  body  from  the  field. 
But  the  generalship  of  Wallace  was  met  by  that  of  the  king. 
Drawing  his  bowmen  to  the  front,  Edward  riddled  the 
Scottish  ranks  with  arrows,  and  then  hurled  his  cavalry  afresh 
on  the  wavering  line.  In  a  moment  all  was  over,  and  the 
maddened  knights  rode  in  and  out  of  the  broken  ranks, 
slaying  without  mercy.  Thousands  fell  on  the  field,  and 
Wallace  himself  escaped  with  difficulty,  followed  by  a  hand- 
ful of  men.  But  ruined  as  the  cause  of  freedom  seemed, 
his  work  was  done.  He  had  roused  Scotland  into  life,  and 
even  a  defeat  like  Falkirk  left  her  tmconquered.  Edward 
remained  master  only  of  the  ground  he  stood  on  ;  want  of 
supplies  forced  him  to  retreat ;  and  in  the  following  year  a 
regency  of  Scotch  nobles  under  Bruce  and  Comyn  con- 
tinued the  struggle  for  independence.  Troubles  at  home 
and  dangers  from  abroad  stayed  Edward's  hand.  The 
barons  were  pressing  more  and  more  vigorously  for  redress 
of  their  grievanqes  and  the  heavy  taxation  brought  about 
by  the  war.  France  was  still  menacing,  and  a  claim  ad- 
vanced by  Pope  Boniface  the  Eighth,  at  its  suggestion,  to 


244  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  feudal  superiority  over  Scotland,  arrested  a  fresh,  advance 
of  the  king.  A  quarrel,  however,  which  broke  out  between 
Philippe  le  Bel  and  the  Papacy  removed  all  obstacles,  and 
enabled  Edward  to  defy  Boniface  and  to  wring  from  France 
a  treaty  in  which  Scotland  was  abandoned.  In  1304  he  re- 
sumed the  work  of  invasion,  and  again  the  nobles  flung 
down  their  arms  as  he  marched  to  the  north.  Comyn,  at 
the  head  of  the  Regency,  acknowledged  his  sovereignty,  and 
the  surrender  of  Stirling  completed  the  conquest  of  Scot- 
land. The  triumph  of  Edward  was  but  the  prelude  to  the 
full  execution  of  his  designs  for  knitting  the  two  countries 
together  by  a  clemency  and  wisdom  which  reveal  the  great- 
ness of  his  statesmanship.  A  general  amnesty  was  extended 
to  all  who  had  shared  in  the  revolt.  Wallace,  who  refused 
to  avail  himself  of  Edward's  mercy,  was  captured,  and  con- 
demned to  death  at  Westminster  on  charges  of  treason, 
sacrilege,  and  robbery.  The  head  of  the  great  patriot 
crowned  in  mockery  with  a  circlet  of  laurel,  was  placed 
upon  London  Bridge.  But  the  execution  of  Wallace  was 
the  one  blot  on  Edward's  clemency.  With  a  masterly 
boldness  he  entrusted  the  government  of  the  country  to  a 
council  of  Scotch  nobles,  many  of  whom  were  freshly 
pardoned  for  their  share  in  the  war,  and  anticipated  the 
policy  of  Cromwell  by  allotting  ten  representatives  to  Scot- 
land in  the  Common  Parliament  of  his  realm.  A  Convoca- 
tion was  summoned  at  Perth  for  the  election  of  these  repre- 
sentatives, and  a  great  judicial  scheme  which  was  promulgated 
in  this  assembly  adopted  the  amended  laws  of  King  David 
as  the  base  of  a  new  legislation,  and  divided  the  country  for 
judicial  purposes  into  four  districts,  Lothian,  Galloway,  the 
Highlands,  and  the  land  between  the  Highlands,  and  the 
Forth,  at  the  head  of  each  of  which  were  placed  two  justiciars, 
the  one  English  and  the  other  Scotch. 


Section  IV.— The  English  Towns. 

[Authorities. — For  the  general  history  of  London  see  its  "  Liber  Albus  "  and 
Liber  Custumarum,"  in  the  series  of  the  Master  of  the  Rolls  ;  for  its  communal 
revolution,  the  "  Liber  des  Antiquis  Legibus,"  edited  by  Mr.  Stapleton  for  the 
Camden  Society  ;  for  the  rising  •€  AVilliam  Longbeard,  the  story  in  William  of 
Newburgh.  In  his  "  Essay  on  English  Municipal  History  "  (1867),  Mr.  Thompson 
has  given  a  useful  account  of  the  relations  of  Leicester  with  its  earls.  A  great 


THE   ENGLISH   TOWNS.  24-3 

•tore  of  documents  will  be  found  in  the  Charter  Rolls  published  by  the  Record 
Commission,  in  Brady's  work  on  English  Boroughs,  and  (though  rather  for  Par- 
liamentary purposes)  in  Stephen's  and  Merewether's  "  History  of  Boroughs  and 
Corporations."  But  the  only  full  and  scientific  examination  of  our  enrly  munici- 
pal history,  at  least  on  one  of  its  sides,  is  to  be  found  in  the  Essay  prefixed  by  Dr. 
Brentano  to  the  "Ordinances of  English  Gilds,"  published  by  the  Early  English 
Text  Society.] 

From  scenes  such  as  we  have  been  describing,  from  the 
wrong  and  bloodshed  of  foreign  conquest,  we  pass  to  the 
peaceful  life  and  progress  of  England  itself. 

Through  the  reign  of  the  three  Edwards  two  revolutions, 
which  have  been  almost  ignored  by  our  historians,  were 
silently  changing  the  whole  character  of  English  society. 
The  first  of  these,  the  rise  of  a  new  class  of  tenant  farmers, 
we  shall  have  to  notice  hereafter  in  its  connection  with  the 
great  agrarian  revolt  which  bears  the  name  of  Wat  Tyler. 
The  second,  the  rise  of  the  craftsmen  within  our  towns,  and 
the  struggle  by  which  they  won  power  and  privilege  from 
the  older  burghers,  is  the  most  remarkable  event  in  the 
period  of  our  national  history  at  which  we  have  arrived. 

The  English  borough  was  originally  a  mere  township  or 
group  of  townships  whose  inhabitants  happened,  either  for 
purposes  of  trade  or  protection,  to  cluster  together  more 
thickly  than  elsewhere.  It  is  this  characteristic  of  our  bor- 
oughs which  separates  them  at  once  from  the  cities  of  Italy 
aird  Provence,  which  had  preserved  the  municipal  institutions 
of  their  Roman  past,  from  the  German  towns  founded  by 
Henry  the  Fowler  with  the  special  purpose  of  sheltering  in- 
dustry from  the  feudal  oppression  around  them,  or  from  the 
communes  of  northern  France  which  sprang  into  existence 
in  revolt  against  feudal  outrage  within  their  walls.  But  in 
England  the  tradition  of  Rome  had  utterly  passed  away, 
while  feudal  oppression  was  held  fairly  in  check  by  the 
crown.  The  English  town,  therefore,  was  in  its  beginning 
simply  a  piece  of  the  general  country,  organized  and  governed 
precisely  in  the  same  manner  as  the  townships  around  it. 
The  burh  or  borough  was  probably  a  more  defensible  place 
than  the  common  village  ;  it  may  have  had  a  ditch  or  mound 
about  it  instead  of  the  quickset-hedge  or  "  tun  "  from  which 
the  township  took  its  name.  But  its  constitution  was  simply 
that  of  the  people  at  large.  The  obligations  of  the  dwellers 
within  its  bounds  were  those  of  the  townships  round,  to  keep 


246  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

fence  and  trench  in  good  repair,  to  send  a  contingent  to  the 
fyrd,  and  a  reeve  and  four  men  to  the  hundred  court  and 
shire  court ;  and  the  inner  rule  of  the  borough  lay  as  in  the 
townships  about  in  the  hands  of  its  own  freemen,  gathered 
in  •'* borough-moot"  or  "  porttnamiirnote."  But  the  social 
change  brought  about  by  the  Danish  wars,  the  legal  require- 
ment that  each  man  should  have  a  lord,  affected  the  towns, 
as  it  affected  the  rest  of  the  country.  Some  passed  into  the 
hands  of  great  thegns  near  to  them  ;  the  bulk  became  known 
as  in  the  demesne  of  the  king.  A  new  officer,  the  lord's  or 
king's  reeve,  was  a  sign  of  this  revolution.  It  was  the  reeve 
who  now  summoned  the  borough-moot  and  administered 
justice  in  it ;  it  was  he  who  collected  the  lord's  dues  or 
annual  rent  of  the  town,  and  who  exacted  the  services  it 
owed  to  its  lord.  To  modern  eyes  these  services  would  imply 
almost  complete  subjection.  When  Leicester,  for  instance, 
passed  from  the  hands  of  the  Conqueror  into  those  of  its 
earls,  its  townsmen  were  bound  to  reap  their  lord's  corn- 
crops,  to  grind  at  his  mill,  to  redeem  their  strayed  cattle 
from  his  pound.  The  great  forest  around  was  the  earl's, 
and  it  was  only  out  of  his  grace  that  the  little  borough  could 
drive  its  swine  into  the  woods  or  pasture  its  cattle  in  the 
glades.  The  justice  and  government  of  the  town  lay  wholly 
in  its  master's  hands  ;  he  appointed  its  bailiffs,  received  the 
fines  and  forfeitures  of  his  tenants,  and  the  fees  and  tolls  of 
their  markets  and  fairs.  But  when  once  these  dues  were 
paid  and  these  services  rendered  the  English  townsman  was 
practically  free.  His  rights  were  as  rigidly  defined  by  custom 
as  those  of  his  lord.  Property  and  person  alike  were  secured 
against  arbitrary  seizure.  He  could  demand  a  fair  trial  on 
any  charge,  and  even  if  justice  was  administered  by  his 
master's  reeve  it  was  administered  in  the  presence  and  with 
the  assent  of  his  fellow-townsmen.  The  bell  which  swung 
out  from  the  town  tower  gathered  the  burgesses  to  a  common 
meeting,  where  they  could  exercise  rights  of  free  speech  and 
free  deliberation  on  their  own  affairs.  Their  merchant-gild 
over  its  ale-feast  regulated  trade,  distributed  the  sums  due 
from  the  town  among  the  different  burgesses,  looked  to  the 
due  repairs  of  gate  and  wall,  and  acted,  in  fact,  pretty  much 
the  same  part  as  a  town-council  of  to-day.  Not  only,  too, 
were  these  rights  secured  by  custom  from  the  first,  but  they 


THE   ENGLISH   TOWNS.  247 

were  constantly  widening  as  time  went  on.  Whenever,  we 
get  a  glimpse  of  the  inner  history  of  an  English  town,  we 
find  the  same  peaceful  revolution  in  progress,  services  dis- 
appearing through  disuse  or  omission,  while  privileges  and 
immunities  are  being  purchased  in  hard  cash.  The  lord  of 
the  town,  whether  he  were  king,  baron  or  abbot,  was  com- 
monly thriftless  or  poor,  and  the  capture  of  a  noble,  or  the 
campaign  of  a  sovereign,  or  the  building  of  some  new  min- 
ster by  a  prior,  brought  about  an  appeal  to  the  thrifty 
burghers,  who  were  ready  to  fill  again  their  master's  treas- 
ury at  the  price  of  the  strip  of  parchment  which  gave  them 
freedom  of  trade,  of  justice,  and  of  government.  Sometimes 
a  chance  story  lights  up  for  us  this  work  of  emancipation. 
At  Leicester  one  of  the  chief  aims  of  its  burgesses  was  to 
regain  their  old  English  trial  by  compurgation,  the  rough 
predecessor  of  trial  by  jury,  which  had  been  abolished  by 
the  earls  in  favor  of  the  foreign  trial  by  battle.  "  It 
chanced,"  says  a  charter  of  the  place,  "  that  two  kinsmen, 
Nicholas,  the  son  of  Aeon,  and  Geoffrey,  the  son  of  Nicholas, 
waged  a  duel  about  a  certain  piece  of  land,  concerning  which 
a  dispute  had  arisen  between  them  ;  and  they  fought  from 
the  first  to  the  ninth  hour,  each  conquering  by  turns.  Then 
one  of  them  fleeing  from  the  other  till  he  came  to  a  certain 
little  pit,  as  he  stood  on  the  brink  of  the  pit,  and  was  about 
to  fall  therein,  his  kinsman  said  to  him  '  Take  care  of  the 
pit,  turn  back  lest  thou  shouldest  fall  into  it.'  Thereat  so 
much  clamor  and  noise  was  made  by  the  bystanders  and  those 
who  were  sitting  around,  that  the  earl  heard  these  clamors 
as  far  off  as  the  castle,  and  he  inquired  of  some  how  it 
was  there  was  such  a  clamor,  and  answer  was  made  to  him 
that  two  kinsmen  were  fighting  about  a  certain  piece  of 
ground,  and  that  one  had  fled  till  he  reached  a  certain 
little  pit,  and  that  as  he  stood  over  the  pit  and  was  about 
to  fall  into  it  the  other  warned  him.  Then  the  townsmen 
being  moved  with  pity  made  a  covenant  with  the  earl  that 
they  should  give  him  threepence  yearly  for  each  house  in 
the  High  Street  that  had  a  gable,  on  condition  that  he 
should  grant  to  them  that  the  twenty-four  jurors  who  were 
in  Leicester  from  ancient  times  should  from  that  time  for- 
ward discuss  and  decide  all  pleas  they  might  have  among 
themselves."  For  the  most  part  the  liberties  of  our  towns 


248  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

were  bought  in  this  way,  by  sheer  hard  bargaining.  Tho 
earliest  English  charters,  save  that  of  London,  date  from 
the  years  when  the  treasury  of  Henry  the  First  was  drained 
by  his  Norman  wars  ;  and  grants  of  municipal  liberty  made 
professedly  by  the  Angevius  are  probably  the  result  of  their 
costly  employment  of  mercenary  troops.  At  the  close,  how- 
ever, of  the  thirteenth  century,  this  struggle  for  emancipa- 
tion was  nearly  over.  The  larger  towns  had  secured  the 
administration  of  justice  in  their  own  borough-courts,  the 
privilege  of  self-government,  and  the  control  of  their  own 
trade,  and  their  liberties  and  charters  served  as  models  and 
incentives  to  the  smaller  communities  which  were  struggling 
into  life. 

During  the  progress  of  this  outer  revolution,  the  inner  life 
of  the  English  town  was  in  the  same  quiet  and  hardly  con- 
scious way  developing  itself  from  the  common 
Gilds*  "  f°rm  °^  the  life  around  it  into  a  form  especially  its 
own.  Within  as  without  the  ditch  or  stockade 
which  formed  the  earliest  boundary  of  the  borough,  land  was 
from  the  first  the  test  of  freedom,  and  the  possession  of  land 
was  what  constituted  the  townsman.  We  may  take,  perhaps, 
a  foreign  instance  to  illustrate  this  fundamental  point  in  our 
municipal  history.  When  Duke  Berthold  of  Zahringen 
resolved  to  found  Freiburg,  his  "free  town/'  in  the  Brisgau, 
the  mode  he  adopted  was  to  gather  a  group  of  traders  to- 
gether, and  to  give  each  man  a  plot  of  ground  for  his  free- 
hold round  what  was  destined  to  be  the  market-place  of  the 
new  community.  In  England  the  landless  man  who  dwelled 
in  a  borough  had  no  share  in  its  corporate  life ;  for  purposes 
of  government  or  property  the  town  was  simply  an  associa- 
tion of  the  landed  proprietors  within  its  bounds  ;  nor  was 
there  anything  in  this  association,  as  it  originally  existed, 
which  could  be  considered  peculiar  or  exceptional.  The 
constitution  of  the  English  town,  however  different  its  form 
may  have  afterwards  become,  was  at  first  simply  that  of  the 
people  at  large.  We  have  seen  that  among  the  German  races 
society  rested  on  the  basis  of  the  family,  that  it  was  the 
family  who  fought  and  settled  side  by  side,  and  the  kinsfolk 
who  were  bound  together  in  ties  of  mutual  responsibility  to 
each  other  and  to  the  law.  As  society  became  more  complex 
and  less  stationary  it  necessarily  outgrew  these  simple  ties  of 


THE   ENGLISH  TOWNS.  249 

blood,  and  in  England  this  dissolution  of  the  family  bond 
seems  to  have  taken  place  at  the  very  time  when  Danish  in- 
cursions and  the  growth  of  a  feudal  temper  among  the  nobles 
rendered  an  isolated  existence  most  perilous  for  the  freeman." 
His  only  resource  was  to  seek  protection  among  his  fellow- 
freemen,  and  to  replace  the  older  brotherhood  of  the  kinsfolk 
by  a  voluntary  association  of  his  neighbors  for  the  same  pur- 
poses of  order  and  self-defense.  The  tendency  to  unite  in 
such  "frith-gilds "or peace-clubs  became  general  throughout 
Europe  during  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries,  but  on  the 
Continent  it  was  roughly  met  and  repressed.  The  successors 
of  Charles  the  Great  enacted  penalties  of  scourging,  nose- 
slitting,  and  banishment  against  voluntary  unions,  and  even 
a  league  of  the  poor  peasants  of  Gaul  against  the  inroads  of 
the  northmen  was  suppressed  by  the  swords  of  the  Prankish 
nobles.  In  England  the  attitude  of  the  kings  was  utterly 
different.  The  system  known  at  a  later  time  as  "frank- 
pledge,"  or  free  engagement  of  neighbor  for  neighbor,  was 
accepted  after  the  Danish  wars  as  the  base  of  social  order. 
./Elfred  recognized  the  common  responsibility  of  the  members 
of  the  "  frith-gild  "  side  by  side  with  that  of  the  kinsfolk,  and 
JEthelstan  accepted  "frith-gilds"  as  a  constituent  element 
borough  life  in  the  Dooms  of  London. 

The  frith-gild,  then,  in  the  earlier  English  town,  was  pre- 
cisely similar  to  the  frith-gilds  which  formed  the  basis  of 
social  order  in  the  country  at  large.  An  oath  of 
mutual  fidelity  among  its  members  was  substi- 
tuted  for  the  tie  of  blood,  while  the  gild-feast, 
held  once  a  month  in  the  common  hall,  replaced  the  gathering 
of  the  kinsfolk  round  their  family  hearth.  But  within  this 
new  family  the  aim  of  the  frith-gild  was  to  establish  a  mutual 
responsibility  as  close  as  that  of  the  old.  "  Let  all  share  the 
same  lot,"  ran  its  law;  "if  any  misdo,  let  all  bear  it."  A 
member  could  look  for  aid  from  his  gild-brothers  in  atoning 
for  any  guilt  incurred  by  mishap.  He  could  call  on  them  for 
assistance  in  case  of  violence  or  wrong  :  if  falsely  accused, 
they  appeared  in  court  as  his  compurgators  ;  if  poor  they 
supported,  and  when  dead  they  buried  him.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  was  responsible  to  them,  as  they  were  to  the  State, 
for  order  and  obedience  to  the  laws.  A  wrong  of  brother 
against  brother  \vns  also  a  wrong  against  the  general  body  ».i' 


250  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  gild,  and  was  punished  by  fine,  or  in  the  last  resort  by 
expulsion,  which  left  the  offender  a  "lawless"  man  and  an 
outcast.  The  one  difference  between  these  gilds  in  country 
a"nd  town  was,  that  in  the  latter  case,  from  their  close  local 
neighborhood,  they  tended  inevitably  to  coalesce.  Under 
/Ethelstan  the  London  gilds  united  into  one  for  the  purpose 
of  carrying  out  more  effectually  their  common  aims,  and  at 
a  later  time  we  find  the  gilds  of  Berwick  enacting  "  that 
where  many  bodies  are  found  side  by  side  in  one  place  they 
may  become  one,  and  have  one  will,  and  in  the  dealings  of 
one  with  another  have  a  strong  and  hearty  love."  The  pro- 
cess was  probably  a  long  and  difficult  one,  for  the  brother- 
hoods naturally  differed  much  in  social  rank,  and  even  after 
the  union  was  effected  we  see  traces  of  the  separate  existence 
to  a  certain  extent  of  some  one  or  more  of  the  wealthier 
or  more  aristocratic  gilds.  In  London,  for  instance,  the 
Cnihten-gild,  which  seems  to  have  stood  at  the  head  of  its 
fellows,  retained  for  a  long  time  its  separate  property,  while 
its  Alderman — as  the  chief  officer  of  each  gild  was  called — 
became  the  Alderman  of  the  united  gild  of  the  whole  city. 
In  Canterbury  we  find  a  similar  gild  of  thegns,  from  which 
the  chief  officers  of  the  town  seem  commonly  to  have  been 
selected.  Imperfect,  however,  as  the  union  might  be,  when 
once  it  was  effected  the  town  passed  from  a  mere  collection 
of  brotherhoods  into  a  powerful  and  organized  community, 
whose  character  was  inevitably  determined  by  the  circum- 
stances of  its  origin.  In  their  beginnings  our  boroughs  seem 
to  have  been  mainly  gatherings  of  persons  engaged  in  agri- 
cultural pursuits  ;  the  first  Dooms  of  London  provide 
especially  for  the  recovery  of  cattle  belonging  to  the  citizens. 
But  as  the  increasing  security  of  the  country  invited  the 
farmer  or  the  squire  to  settle  apart  in  his  own  fields,  and  the 
growth  of  estate  and  trade  told  on  the  towns  themselves,  the 
difference  between  town  and  country  became  more  sharply 
defined.  London,  of  course,  took  the  lead  in  this  new  de- 
velopment of  civic  life.  Even  in  JSthelstan's  day  every 
London  merchant  who  had  made  three  long  voyages  on 
his  own  account  ranked  as  a  thegn.  Its  "lithsmen,"  or 
shipmen's-gild,  were  of  sufficient  importance  under  Hartha- 
cnut  to  figure  in  the  election  of  a  king,  and  its  principal 
street  still  tells  of  the  rapid  growth  of  trade,  in  the  name  of 


THE   ENGLISH   TOWNS.  251 

"  Cheap-side,"  or  the  bargaining  place.  But  at  the  Xorman 
Conquest,  the  commercial  tendency  had  become  unirersal. 
The  name  given  to  the  united  brotherhood  is  in  almost  every 
case  no  longer  that  of  the  "  town-gild,"  but  of  the  "  mer- 
chant-gild." 

This  social  change  in  the  character  of  the  townsmen  pro- 
duced important  results  in  the  character  of  their  municipal 
institutions.  In  becoming  a  merchant-gild  the 
body  of  citizens  who  formed  the  "  town  "  enlarged 
their  powers  of  civic  legislation  by  applying  them 
to  the  control  of  their  internal  trade.  It  became  their  special 
business  to  obtain  from  the  Crown,  or  from  their  lords,  wider 
commercial  privileges,  rights  of  coinage,  grants  of  fairs,  and 
exemption  from  tolls  ;  while  within  the  town  itself  they 
framed  regulations  as  to  the  sale  and  quality  of  goods,  the 
control  of  markets  and  the  recovery  of  debts.  A  yet  more 
important  result  sprang  from  the  increase  of  population 
which  the  growth  of  wealth  and  industry  brought  with  it. 
The  mass  of  the  new  settlers,  composed  as  they  were  of 
escaped  serfs,  of  traders  without  landed  holdings,  of  families 
who  had  lost  their  original  lot  in  the  borough,  and  generally 
of  the  artisans  and  the  poor,  had  no  part  in  the  actual  life  of 
the  town.  The  right  of  trade  and  of  the  regulation  of  trade, 
in  common  with  all  other  forms  of  jurisdiction,  lay  wholly 
in  the  hands  of  the  landed  burghers  whom  we  have  described. 
By  a  natural  process,  too,  their  superiority  in  wealth  pro- 
duced a  fresh  division  between  the  "  burghers"  of  the  mer- 
chant-gild and  the  unenfranchised  mass  around  them.  The 
same  change  which  severed  at  Florence  the  seven  Greater 
Arts,  or  trades,  from  the  fourteen  Lesser  Arts,  and  which 
raised  the  three  occupations  of  banking,  the  manufacture 
and  the  dyeing  of  cloth,  to  a  position  of  superiority  even 
within  the  privileged  circle  of  the  seven,  told,  though  with 
less  force,  on  the  English  boroughs.  The  burghers  of  the 
merchant-gild  gradually  concentrated  themselves  on  the 
greater  operations  of  commerce,  on  trades  which  required  a 
larger  capital,  while  the  meaner  employments  of  general 
traffic  were  abandoned  to  their  poorer  neighbors.  This  ad- 
vance in  the  division  of  labor  is  marked  by  such  severances 
as  we  note  in  the  thirteenth  century  of  the  cloth  merchant 
from  the  tailor,  or  the  leather  merchant  from  the  butcher. 


252  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

But  the  result  of  this  severance  was  all- important  in  its  in- 
fluence on  the  constitution  of  our  towns.  The  members  of 
the  trades  thus  abandoned  by  the  wealthier  burghers  formed 
themselves  into  Craft-gilds,  which  soon  rose  into  dangerous 
rivalry  with  the  original  Merchant-gild  of  the  town.  A 
seven  years'  apprenticeship  formed  the  necessary  prelude  to 
full  membership  of  any  trade-gild.  Their  regulations  were 
of  the  minutest  character  ;  the  quality  and  value  of  work  was 
rigidly  prescribed,  the  hours  of  toil  fixed  "  from  day-break  to 
curfew/'  and  strict  provision  made  against  competition  in 
labor.  At  each  meeting  of  these  gilds  their  members 
gathered  round  the  Craft-box,  which  contained  the  rules  of 
their  Society,  and  stood  with  bared  heads  as  it  was  opened. 
The  warden  and  a  quorum  of  gild-brothers  formed  a  court 
which  enforced  the  ordinances  of  the  gild,  inspected  all  work 
done  by  its  members,  confiscated  unlawful  tools  or  unworthy 
goods  ;  and  disobedience  to  their  orders  was  punished  by 
fines,  or  in  the  last  resort  by  expulsion,  which  involved  the 
loss  of  right  to  trade.  A  common  fund  was  raised  by  contri- 
butions among  the  members,  which  not  only  provided  for 
the  trade  objects  of  the  gild,  but  sufficed  to  found  chantries 
and  masses,  and  set  up  painted  windows  in  the  church  of 
their  patron  saint.  Even  at  the  present  day,  the  arms  of  the 
craft-gild  may  often  be  seen  blazoned  in  cathedrals  side  by 
side  with  those  of  prelates  and  of  kings.  But  it  was  only  by 
slow  degrees  that  they  rose  to  such  a  height  as  this.  The 
first  steps  in  their  existence  were  the  most  difficult,  for  to 
enable  a  trade-gild  to  carry  out  its  objects  with  any  success, 
it  was  first  necessary  that  the  whole  body  of  craftsmen  be- 
longing to  the  trade  should  be  compelled  to  belong  to  it,  and 
secondly,  that  a  legal  control  over  the  trade  itself  should  be 
secured  to  it.  A  royal  charter  was  indispensable  for  these 
purposes,  and  over  the  grant  Of  these  charters  took  place  the 
first  struggle  with  the  merchant-gild,  which  had  till  then 
solely  exercised  jurisdiction  over  trade  within  the  boroughs. 
The  weavers,  who  were  the  first  trade-gild  to  secure  royal 
sanction  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the  First,  were  still  engaged 
in  the  contest  for  existence  as  late  as  the  reign  of  John,  when 
the  citizens  of  London  bought  for  a  time  the  suppression  of 
their  gild.  Even  under  the  house  of  Lancaster,  Exeter  was 
engaged  in  resisting  the  establishment  of  a  tailors'  gild. 


THE   ENGLISH   TOWNS.  253 

From  the  eleventh  century,  however,  the  spread  of  these 
societies  went  steadily  on,  and  the  control  of  trade  passed 
from  the  merchant-gilds  to  the  craft-gilds. 

It  is  this  struggle,  to  use  the  technical  terms  of  the  time, 
of  the  "  greater  folk  "  against  the  "lesser  folk,"  or  of  the 
"commune,"  the  general  mass  of  the  inhabit-  xhc  Greater 
ants,  against  the  "  prudhommes,"  or  "  wiser  "  few,  and  Lesser 
which  brought  about,  as  it  passed  from  the  reg-  Folk> 
illation  of  trade  to  the  general  government  of  the  town,  the 
great  civic  revolution  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries.  On  the  Continent,  and  especially  along  the  Rhine, 
the  struggle  was  as  fierce  as  the  supremacy  of  the  older  bur- 
ghers had  been  complete.  In  Kolu  the  craftsmen  had  been 
reduced  to  all  but  serfage,  and  the  merchant  of  Brussels 
might  box  at  his  will  the  t-ars  of  ''the  man  without  heart  or 
honor  who  lives  by  his  toil."  .Such  social  tyranny  of  class 
over  class  brought  a  century  of  bloodshed  to  the  cities  of 
Germany  ;  but  in  England  the  tyranny  of  class  over  class 
had  been  restrained  by  the  general  tenor  of  the  law,  and  the 
revolution  took  for  the  most  part  a  milder  form.  The  longest 
and  bitterest  strife  of  all  was  naturally  at  London.  Xowhere 
had  the  territorial  constitution  struck  root  so  deeply,  and 
nowhere  had  the  landed  oligarchy  risen  to  such  a  height  of 
wealth  and  influence.  The  city  was  divided  into  wards,  each 
of  which  was  governed  by  an  alderman  drawn  from  the  rul- 
ing class.  In  some,  indeed,  the  office  seems  to  have  become 
hereditary.  The  "  magnates,"  or  •'•'  barons,"  of  the  merchant- 
gild  advised  alone  on  all  matters  of  civic  government  or  trade 
regulation,  and  distributed  or  assessed  at  their  will  the  rev- 
enues or  burdens  of  the  town.  Such  a  position  afforded  an 
opening  for  corruption  and  oppression  of  the  most  galling 
kind  ;  and  it  seems  to  have  been  the  general  impression  of 
the  unfair  assessment  levied  on  the  poor,  and  the  undue 
burdens  which  \vnv  thrown  on  the  unenfranchised  classes, 
which  provoked  the  first  serious  discontent.  "William  of  the 
Long  Beard,  himself  one  of  the  governing  body,  placed  him- 
self at  the  head  of  a  conspiracy  which  numbered,  in  the 
terrified  fancy  of  the  burghers,  fifty  thousand  of  the  crafts- 
men. His  eloquence,  his  bold  defiance  of  the  aidermen  in 
the  town-mote,  gained  him  at  any  rate  a  wide  popularity,  and 
the  crowds  who  surrounded  him  hailed  him  as  ''the  saviour 


254  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

of  the  poor."  One  of  his  addresses  is  luckily  preserved  to  us 
by  a  hearer  of  the  time.  In  medieval  fashion  he  began  with 
a  text  from  the  Vulgate.  "  Ye  shall  draw  water  with  joy  from 
the  fountain  of  the  Saviour."  "  I,"  he  began,  "  am  the  sav- 
iour of  the  poor.  Ye  poor  men  who  have  felt  the  weight  of 
rich  men's  hands,  draw  from  my  fountain  waters  of  wholesome 
instruction  and  that  with  joy,  for  the  time  of  your  visitation 
is  at  hand.  For  I  will  divide  the  waters  from  the  waters. 
It  is  the  people  Avho  are  the  waters,  and  I  will  divide  the 
lowly  and  faithful  folk  from  the  proud  and  faithless  folk  ;  I 
will  part  the  chosen  from  the  reprobate  as  light  from  dark- 
ness." But  it  was  in  vain  thac  by  appeals  to  the  king  he 
strove  to  win  royal  favor  for  the  popular  cause.  The  support 
of  the  moneyed  classes  was  essential  to  Richard  in  the  costly 
wars  with  Philip  of  France,  and  the  Justiciar,  Archbishop 
Hubert,  after  a  moment  of  hesitation,  issued  orders  for  his 
arrest.  William  felled  with  an  ax  the  first  soldier  who 
advanced  to  seize  him,  and  taking  refuge  with  a  few  followers 
in  the  tower  of  St.  Mary-le-Bow,  summoned  his  adherents  to 
rise.  Hubert,  however,  who  had  already  flooded  the  city 
with  troops,  with  bold  contempt  of  the  right  of  sanctuary, 
set  fire  to  the  tower  and  forced  William  to  surrender.  A 
burgher's  son,  whose  father  he  had  slain,  stabbed  him  as  he 
came  forth,  and  with  his  death  the  quarrel  slumbered  for 
more  than  fifty  years. 

No  further  movement,  in  fact,  took  place  till  the  outbreak 
of  the  Barons'  war,  but  the  city  had  all  through  the  interval 
been  seething  with  discontent ;  the  unenfran- 
munem"  cn^se<^  craftsmen,  under  pretext  of  preserving  the 
peace,  had  united  in  secret  frith-gilds  of  their 
own,  and  mobs  rose  from  time  to  time  to  sack  the  houses  of 
foreigners  and  the  wealthier  burghers.  But  it  was  not  till 
the  civil  war  began  that  the  open  contest  recommenced. 
The  craftsmen  forced  their  way  into  the  town-mote,  and 
setting  aside  the  aldermen  and  magnates,  chose  Thomas  Fitz- 
Thomas  for  their  mayor.  Although  dissension  still  raged 
during  the  reign  of  the  second  Edward,  we  may  regard  this 
election  as  marking  the  final  victory  of  the  craft-gilds.  Under 
his  successor  all  contest  seems  to  have  ceased  :  charters  had 
been  granted  to  every  trade,  their  ordinances  formally 
recognized  and  enrolled  in  the  mayor's  court,  and  distinctive 


THE   KING   AND   THE    BARONAGE.      1290   TO   1327.      256 

liveries  assumed  to  which  they  owed  the  name  of  "  Livery 
Companies  "  which  they  still  retain.  The  wealthier  citizens 
who  found  their  old  power  broken,  regained  influence  by 
enrolling  themselves  as  members  of  the  trade-gilds,  and 
Edward  the  Third  himself  humored  the  current  of  civic 
feeling  by  becoming  a  member  of  the  gild  of  Armorers. 
This  event  marks  the  time  when  the  government  of  our  towns 
had  become  more  really  popular  than  it  ever  again  became 
till  the  Municipal  Reform  Act  of  our  own  days.  It  had 
passed  from  the  hands  of  an  oligarchy  into  those  of  the  mid- 
dle classes,  and  there  was  nothing  as  yet  to  foretell  the  reac- 
tionary revolution  by  which  the  trade-gilds  themselves  became 
an  oligarchy  as  narrow  as  that  which  they  had  deposed. 

Section  V.— The  King  and  the  Baronage.    1290—1327. 

[Authorities.—  For  Edward  I.  as  before.  For  Edward  II.  we  have  three  im- 
portant contemporaries  :  on  the  King's  side,  Thomas  de  la  More  (in  Camden, 
"  Anglica,  Brittanica.  etc.")  :  on  that  of  the  Barons,  Trokelowe's  Annals  (pub- 
lished by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls),  and  the  Life  by  a  monk  of  Malmesbury,  printed 
by  Hearne.  The  short  Chronicle  by  Murimuth  is  also  contemporary  in  date. 
Hailam  ("Middle  Ages")  has  illustrated  the  constitutional  aspect  of  the  time.] 

If  we  turn  again  to  the  constitutional  history  of  England 
from  the  accession  of  Edward  the  First  we  find  a  progress  not 
less  real  but  checkered  with  darker  vicissitudes     England 
than  the  progress  of  our  towns.     A  great  transfer      under 
of  power  had  been  brought  about  by  the  long   Edward  I. 
struggle  for  the  Charter,  by  the  reforms  of  Earl  Simon,  and 
by  the  enrlier  legislation  of  Ed \vard  himself.     His  conception 
of  kingship  indeed  was  that  of  a  just  and  religious  Henry 
the  Second,  but  his  England  was  as  different  from  the  England 
of  Henry  as  the  Parliament  of  the  one  was  different  from  the 
Great  Council  of  the  other.     In  the  rough  rimes  of  Robert 
of  Gloucester  we  read  the  simple  political  creed  of  the  people 
at  large. 

"  When  the  land  through  God's  grace  to  good  peace  was  brought 
For  to  have  the  old  laws  the  high  men  turned  their  thought ; 
For  to  have,  as  we  said  erst,  the  good  old  Law, 
The  King  made  his  charter  and  granted  it  with  sawe." 

But  the  power  which  the  Charter  had  wrested  from  the 
Crown  fell  not  to  the  people  but  to  the  Baronage.  The 
farmer  and  the  artisan,  though  they  could  fight  in  some  great 


256  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

crisis  for  freedom,  had  as  yet  no  wish  to  interfere  in  the  com- 
mon task  of  government.  The  vast  industrial  change  in  both 
town  and  country,  which  had  begun  during  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  Third,  and  which  continued  with  increasing  force 
during  that  of  his  sou,  absorbed  the  energy  and  attention  of 
the  trading  classes.  In  agriculture,  the  inclosure  of  common 
lands  and  the  introduction  of  the  system  of  leases  on  the  part 
of  the  great  proprietors,  coupled  with  the  subdivision  of 
estates  which  was  facilitated  by  Edward's  legislation,  was 
gradually  creating  out  of  the  masses  of  rural  bondsmen  a  new 
class  of  tenant  farmers,  whose  whole  energy  was  absorbed  in 
their  own  great  rise  to  social  freedom.  The  very  causes 
which  rendered  the  growth  of  municipal  liberty  so  difficult, 
increased  the  wealth  of  the  towns.  To  the  trade  with  Nor- 
way and  the  Hanse  towns  of  North  Germany,  the  wool-trade 
with  Flanders,  and  the  wine  trade  with  Gascony,  was  now- 
added  a  fast  increasing  commerce  with  Italy  and  Spain.  The 
great  Venetian  merchant  galleys  appeared  on  the  English 
coast,  Florentine  traders  settled  in  the  southern  ports,  the 
bankers  of  Florence  and  Lucca  followed  those  of  Cahors,  who 
had  already  dealt  a  death-blow  to  the  usury  of  the  Jews. 
But  the  wealth  and  industrial  energy  of  the  country  was 
shown,  not  only  in  the  rise  of  a  capitalist  class,  but  in  a  crowd 
of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  buildings  which  distinguished  this 
period.  Christian  architecture  reached  its  highest  beauty  in 
the  opening  of  Edward's  reign,  a  period  marked  by  the  com- 
pletion of  the  abbey  church  of  Westminster  and  the  exquisite 
cathedral  church  at  Salisbury.  An  English  noble  was  proud 
to  be  styled  "  an  incomparable  builder,''  while  some  traces  of 
the  art  which  was  rising  across  the  Alps  perhaps  flowed  in 
with  the  Italian  ecclesiastics  whom  the  Papacy  was  forcing 
on  the  English  Church.  In  the  abbey  of  Westminster  the 
shrine  of  the  Confessor,  the  mosaic  pavement,  and  the  paint- 
ings on  the  walls  of  minster  and  chapter-house,  remind  us 
of  the  schools  which  were  springing  up  under  Giotto  and  the 
Pisans. 

But  even  had  this  industrial  distraction  been  wanting  the 

trading  classes  had  no  mind  to  claim  any  direct  part  in  the 

The  Baron-  actual  work  of  government.     It  was  a  work  which, 

age  and  its  in  default  of  the  Crown,  fell  naturally,  according 

Rnle-       to  the  ideas  of  the  time,  to  the  Baronage.     Con- 


THE   KING    AND   THE   BARONAGE.      1290   TO   1327.      257 

stitutionally  the  position  of  the  English  nobles  had  now  be- 
come established.  A  king  could  no  longer  make  laws  or 
levy  taxes  or  even  make  war  without  their  assent.  And  in 
the  Baronage  the  nation  reposed  an  unwavering  trust.  The 
nobles  of  England  were  no  more  the  brutal  foreigners  from 
whose  violence  the  strong  hand  of  a  Norman  ruler  had  been 
needed  to  protect  his  subjects ;  they  were  as  English  as  the 
peasant  or  the  trader.  They  had  won  English  liberty  by  their 
swords,  and  the  tradition  of  their  order  bound  them  to  look 
on  themselves  as  its  natural  guardians.  At  the  close  of  the 
Barons'  war,  the  problem  which  had  so  long  troubled  the 
realm,  the  problem  of  how  to  ensure  its  government  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  Charter,  was  solved  by  the  transfer  of  the 
business  of  administration  into  the  hands  of  a  standing  com- 
mittee of  the  greater  prelates  and  barons,  acting  as  chief 
officers  of  state  in  conjunction  with  specially  appointed  min- 
isters of  the  Crown.  The  body  thus  composed  was  known  as 
the  Continual  Council ;  and  the  quiet  government  of  the 
kingdom  by  the  Council  in  the  long  interval  between  the 
death  of  Henry  the  Third  and  his  son's  return  shows  how 
effective  this  role  of  the  nobles  was.  It  is  significant  of  the 
new  relation  which  they  were  to  strive  to  establish  between 
themselves  and  the  Crown  that  in  the  brief  which  announced 
Edward's  accession  the  Council  asserted  that  the  new  monarch 
mounted  his  throne  "-by  the  will  of  the  peers."  The  very 
form  indeed  of  the  new  parliament,  in  which  the  barons  were 
backed  by  the  knights  of  the  shire,  elected  for  tlve  most  part 
under  their  influence,  and  by  the  representatives  of  the 
towns,  still  true  to  the  traditions  of  the  Barons'  war  ;  the 
increased  frequency  of  these  parliamentary  assemblies  which 
gave  opportunity  for  counsel,  for  party  organization,  and  a 
distinct  political  base  of  action  ;  above  all,  the  new  financial 
power  which  their  control  over  taxation  enabled  them  to 
exert  on  the  throne,  ultimately  placed  the  rule  of  the  nobles 
on  a  basis  too  strong  to  be  shaken  by  the  utmost  efforts  of 
even  Edward  himself. 

From  the  first  the  king  struggled  fruitlessly  against  this 
overpowering  influence  ;  and  his  sympathies  must  have  been 
stirred  by  the  revolution  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Channel,  where  the  French  kings  were  crushing 
the  power  of  the  feudal  baronage,  and  erecting  a 
'7 


258  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

royal  despotism  on  its  ruins.  Edward  watched  jealously  over 
the  ground  which  the  Crown  had  already  gained  against  the 
nobles.  Following  the  policy  of  Henry  II.,  at  the  very  out- 
set of  his  reign  he  instituted  a  commission  of  inquiry  into 
the  judicial  franchises  still  existing,  and  on  its  report  itiner- 
ant justices  were  sent  to  discover  by  what  right  these  fran- 
chises were  held.  The  writs  of  "  quo  warranto  "  were  roughly 
met  here  and  there.  Earl  Warenne  bared  a  rusty  sword,  and 
flung  it  on  the  justices' table.  "This,  sirs,"  he  said,  "is 
my  warrant.  By  the  sword  our  fathers  won  their  lands  when 
they  came  over  with  the  Conqueror,  and  by  the  sword  we 
will  keep  them."  But  the  king  was  far  from  limiting  him- 
self to  the  plans  of  Henry  II.  ;  he  aimed  further  at  neutraliz- 
ing the  power  of  the  nobles  by  raising  the  whole  body  of 
landowners  to  the  same  level ;  and  a  royal  writ  ordered  all 
freeholders  who  held  land  of  the  value  of  twenty  pounds  to 
receive  knighthood  at  the  king's  hands.  While  the  political 
influence/of  the  baronage  as  a  leading  element  in  the  nation 
mounted,  in  fact,  the  personal  and  purely  feudal  power  of 
each  individual  on  his  estates  as  steadily  fell.  The  hold 
which  the  Crown  had  gained  on  every  noble  family  by  its 
rights  of  wardship  and  marriage,  the  circuits  of  the  royal 
judges,  the  ever  narrowing  bounds  within  which  baronial 
justice  was  circumscribed,  the  blow  dealt  by  scutage  at  their 
military  power,  the  prompt  intervention  of  the  Council  in 
their  feuds,  lowered  the  nobles  more  and  more  to  the  level  of 
their  fellow  subjects.  Much  yet  remained  to  be  done.  Dif- 
ferent as  the  English  baronage,  taken  as  a  whole,  was  from 
a  feudal  noblesse  like  that  of  Germany  or  France,  there  is  in 
every  military  class  a  natural  drift  towards  violence  and  law- 
lessness, which  even  the  stern  justice  of  Edward  found  it 
difficult  to  repress.  Throughout  his  reign  his  strong  hand 
was  needed  to  enforce  order  on  warring  nobles.  Great  earls, 
such  as  those  of  Gloucester  and  Hereford,  carried  on  private 
war  ;  in  Shropshire  the  Earl  of  Arundel  waged  his  feud  with 
Fulk  Fitz  Warine.  To  the  lesser  and  poorer  nobles  the 
wealth  of  the  trader,  the  long  wain  of  goods  as  it  passed 
along  the  highway,  was  a  tempting  prey.  Once,  under  cover 
of  a  mock  tournament  of  monks  against  canons,  a  band  of 
country  gentlemen  succeeded  in  introducing  themselves  into 
the  great  merchant  fair  at  Boston  ;  at  nightfall  every  booth 


THE   KING   AND   THE  BARONAGE.      1290   TO   1327.      259 

was  on  fire,  the  merchants  robbed  and  slaughtered,  and  the 
booty  carried  off  to  ships  which  lay  ready  at  the  quay. 
Streams  of  gold  and  silver,  ran  the  tale  of  popular  horror, 
flowed  melted  down  the  gutters  to  the  sea  ;  "all  the  money 
in  England  could  hardly  n^ke  good  the  loss."  Even  at  the 
close  of  Edward's  reign  lawless  bauds  of  "  trail-bastons,"  or 
club-men,  maintained  themselves  by  general  outrage,  aided 
the  country  nobles  in  their  feuds,  and  wrested  money  and 
goods  by  tin-eats  from  the  great  tradesmen.  The  king  was 
strong  enough  to  fine  and  imprison  the  earls,  to  hang  the 
chief  of  the  Boston  marauders,  and  to  suppress  the  outlaws 
by  rigorous  commissions.  During  Edward's  absence  of  three 
years  from  the  realm,  the  judges,  who  were  themselves  drawn 
from  the  lesser  baronage,  were  charged  with  violence  and 
corruption.  After  a  careful  investigation  the  judicial  abuses 
were  recognized  and  amended  ;  two  of  the  chief  justices  were 
banished  from  the  country,  and  their  colleagues  imprisoned 
and  fined. 

The  next  year  saw  a  step  which  remains  the  great  blot  upon 
Edward's  reign.  Under  the  Angevins  the  popular  hatred  of 
the  Jews  had  grown  rapidly  in  intensity.  But  the 
royal  protection  had  never  wavered.  Henry  the 
Second  had  granted  them  the  right  of  burial  out- 
side of  every  city  where  they  dwelt.  Eichard  had  punished 
heavily  a  massacre  of  the  Jews  at  York,  and  organized  a  mixed 
court  of  Jews  and  Christians  for  the  registration  of  their 
contracts.  John  suffered  none  to  plunder  them  save  himself, 
though  he  once  wrested  from  them  a  sum  equal  to  a  year's 
revenue  of  his  realm.  The  troubles  of  the  next  reign  brought 
in  a  harvest  greater  than  even  the  royal  greed  could  reap  ; 
the  Jews  grew  wealthy  enough  to  acquire  estates,  and  only  a 
burst  of  popular  feeling  prevented  a  legal  decision  which 
would  have  enabled  them  to  own  freeholds.  Their  pride  and 
contempt  of  the  superstitions  around  them  broke  out  in  the 
taunts  they  leveled  at  processions  as  they  passed  their  Jew- 
ries, sometimes  as  at  Oxford  in  actual  attacks  upon  them. 
Wild  stories  floated  about  among  the  people  of  children  car- 
ried off  to  Jewish  houses,  to  be  circumcised  or  crucified,  and 
a  boy  of  Lincoln  who  was  found  slain  in  a  Jewish  house  was 
canonized  by  popular  reverence  as  "  St.  Hugh."  The  first 
work  of  the  Friars  was  to  settle  in  the  Hebrew  quarters  and 


260  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

attempt  their  conversion,  but  the  tide  of  popular  fury  rose 
too  fast  for  these  gentler  means  of  reconciliation.  When  the 
Franciscans  saved  seventy  Jews  from  death  by  their  prayers 
to  Henry  the  Third  the  populace  angrily  refused  the  brethren 
alms.  The  sack  of  Jewry  after  Jewry  was  the  sign  of  popu- 
lar hatred  during  the  Barons*  war.  With  its  close  fell  on 
the  Jews  the  more  terrible  persecution  of  the  law.  Statute 
after  statute  hemmed  them  in.  They  were  forbidden  to  hold 
real  property,  to  employ  Christian  servants,  to  move  through 
the  streets  without  the  two  white  tablets  of  wool  on  their 
breasts  which  distinguished  their  race.  They  were  prohibited 
from  building  new  synagogues,  or  eating  with  Christians,  or 
acting  as  physicians  to  them.  Their  trade,  already  crippled 
by  the  rivalry  of  the  bankers  of  Cahors,  was  annihilated  by  a 
royal  order,  which  bade  them  renounce  usury  under  pain  of 
death.  At  last  persecution  could  do  no  more,  and  on  the  eve 
of  his  struggle  with  Scotland,  Edward,  eager  at  the  moment 
to  find  supplies  for  his  .treasury,  and  himself  swayed  by  the 
fanaticism  of  his  subjects,  bought  the  grant  of  a  fifteenth  from 
clergy  and  laity  by  consenting  to  drive  the  Jews  from  his 
realm.  Of  the  sixteen  thousand  who  preferred  exile  to  apos- 
tasy few  reached  the  shores  of  France.  Many  were  wrecked, 
others  robbed  and  flung  overboard.  One  shipmaster  turned 
out  a  crew  of  wealthy  merchants  on  to  a  sandbank,  and  bade 
them  call  a  new  Moses  to  save  them  from  the  sea.  From  the 
time  of  Edward  to  that  of  Cromwell  no  Jew  touched  English 
ground. 

No  share  in  the  enormities  which  accompanied  the  expul- 
sion of  the  Jews  can  fall  upon  Edward,  for  he  not  only  suf- 
Edward     f  ei>ed  the  fugitives  to  take  their  wealth  with  them, 
and  the     but  punished  with  the  halter  those  who  plun- 
Baronage.    dere(}  them  at  sea.     But  the  expulsion  was  none 
the  less  cruel,  and  the  grant  of  a  fifteenth  made  by  the  grate- 
ful Parliament  proved  but  a  poor  substitute  for  the  loss  which 
the  royal  treasury  had  sustained.    The  Scotch  war  more  than 
exhausted  the  aids  granted  by  the  Parliament.     The  treasury 
was  utterly  drained;  the  costly,  fight  with  the  French  in 
Gascony  called  for  supplies,  while  the  king  was  planning  a 
yet  costlier  attack  on  northern  France  with  the  aid  of  Flan- 
ders.    It  was  sheer  want  which  drove  Edward  to  tyrannous 
extortion.    His  first  blow  fell  on  the  Church  j  he  had  already 


THE  KING   AND   THE  BARONAGE.      1290   TO    1327 .      201 

demanded  half  their  annual  income  from  the  clergy,  and  so 
terrible  was  his  wrath  at  their  resistance,  that  the  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's,  who  had  stood  forth  to  remonstrate,  dropped  dead 
of  sheer  terror  at  his  feet.  "  If  any  oppose  the  king's  de- 
mand," said  a  royal  envoy,  in  the  midst  of  the  Convocation, 
"let  him  stand  up  that  he  may  be  noted  as  an  enemy  to  the 
king's  peace."  The  outraged  churchmen  fell  back  on  an  un- 
tenable %  plea  that  their  aid  was  due  solely  to  Rome,  and 
pleaded  a  bull  of  exemption,  issued  by  Pope  Boniface  VIII., 
as  a  ground  for  refusing  to  comply  with  further  taxation. 
Edward  met  their  refusal  by  a  general  outlawry  of  the  whole 
order.  The  king's  courts  were  closed,  and  all  justice  denied 
to  those  who  refused  the  king  aid.  By  their  actual  plea  the 
clergy  had  put  themselves  formally  in  the  wrong,  and  the 
outlawry  soon  forced  them  to  submission,  but  their  aid  did 
little  to  recruit  the  exhausted  treasury,  while  the  pressure  of 
the  war  steadily  increased.  Far  wider  measures  of  arbitrary 
taxation  were  needful  to  equip  an  expedition  which  Edward 
prepared  to  lead  in  person  to  Flanders.  The  country  gentle- 
men were  compelled  to  take  up  knighthood,  or  to  com- 
pound for  exemption  from  the  burdensome  honor.  Forced 
contributions  of  cattle  and  corn  were  demanded  from  the 
counties,  and  the  export  duty  on  wool — now  the  staple  prod- 
uce of  the  country — was  raised  to  six  times  its  former  amount. 
Though  he  infringed  no  positive  charter  or  statute,  the  work 
of  the  Great  Charter  and  the  Baron's  war  seemed  suddenly  to 
have  been  undone.  But  the  blow  had  no  sooner  been  struck 
than  Edward  found  himself  powerless  within  his  realm.  The 
baronage  roused  itself  to  resistance,  and  the  two  greatest  of 
the  English  nobles,  Bohun,  Earl  of  Hereford,  and  Bigod,  Earl 
of  Norfolk,  placed  themselves  at  the  head  of  the  opposition. 
Their  protest  against  the  war  and  the  financial  measures  by 
which  it  was  carried  on,  took  the  practical  form  of  a  refusal 
vo  lead  a  force  to  Gascony  as  Edward's  lieutenants,  while  he 
himself  sailed  for  Flanders.  They  availed  themselves  of  the 
plea  that  they  were  not  bound  to  foreign  service  save  in  at- 
tendance on  the  king.  "  By  God,  Sir  Earl,"  swore  the  king 
to  Bigod,  "  you  shall  either  go  or  hang  !  "  "  By  God,  Sir 
King,"  was  the  cool  reply,  "I  will  neither  go  nor  hang  !" 
Ere  the  Parliament  he  had  convened  could  meet,  Edward  had 
discovered  his  own  powerlessness,  and,  with  one  of  those 


262  HISTOKY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

sudden  revulsions  of  feeling  of  which  his  nature  was  capable, 
he  stood  before  his  people  in  Westminster  Hall  and  owned, 
with  a  burst  of  tears,  that  he  had  taken  their  substance  with- 
out due  warrant  of  law.  His  passionate  appeal  to  their  loy- 
alty wrested  a  reluctant  assent  to  the  prosecution  of  the  war, 
but  the  crisis  had  taught  the  need  of  further  securities 
against  the  royal  power.  While  Edward  was  still  struggling 
in  Flanders,  the  Primate,  Winchelsey,  joined  the  two  earls 
and  the  citizens  of  London  in  forbidding  any  further  levy  of 
supplies  till  Edward  at  Ghent  solemnly  confirmed  the  Char- 
ter with  the  new  clauses  added  to  it  prohibiting  the  king  from 
raising  taxes  save  by  general  consent  of  the  realm.  At  the 
demand  of  the  barons  he  renewed  the  Confirmation  in  1299, 
when  his  attempt  to  add  an  evasive  clause  saving  the  rights 
of  the  Crown  proved  the  justice  of  their  distrust.  Two  years 
later  a  fresh  gathering  of  the  barons  in  arms  wrested  from 
him  the  full  execution  of  the  Charter  of  Forests.  The  bitter- 
ness of  his  humiliation  preyed  on  him  ;  he  evaded  his  pledge 
to  levy  no  new  taxes  on  merchandise  by  the  sale  to  merchants 
of  certain  privileges  of  trading  ;  and  a  formal  absolution  from 
his  promises  which  he  obtained  from  the  Pope  showed  his  in- 
tention of  re-opening  the  questions  he  had  yielded.  His  hand 
was  stayed,  however,  by  the  fatal  struggle  with  Scotland 
which  revived  in  the  rising  of  Eobert  Bruce,  and  the  king's 
death  bequeathed  the  contest  to  his  worthless  son. 

Worthless,  however,  as  Edward  the  Second  morally  might 
be,  he  was  far  from  being  destitute  of  the  intellectual  power 

which  seemed  hereditary  in  the  Plantagenets.     It 
Second*  *  was  ^s  settled  purpose  to  fling  off  the  yoke  of  the 

baronage,  and  the  means  by  which  he  designed 
accomplishing  his  purpose  was  the  choice  of  a  minister 
wholly  dependent  on  the  Crown.  We  have  already  noticed 
the  change  by  which  the  "  clerks  of  the  king's  chapel,  "  who 
had  been  the  ministers  of  arbitrary  government  under  the 
Normans  and  Angevins,  had  been  quietly  superseded  by  the 
prelates  and  lords  of  the  Continual  Council.  At  the  close 
of  his  father's  reign,  a  direct  demand  on  the  part  of  the 
barons  to  nominate  the  great  officers  of  state  had  been 
curtly  rejected  ;  but  the  royal  choice  had  been  practically 
limited  in  the  selection  of  its  ministers  to  the  class  of  prelates 
and  nobles,  and.  however  closely  connected  with  royalty, 


THK    K1N<;    AND    THE   BARONAGE.       1290    TO    1327.      263 

such  officers  always  to  a  great  extent  shared  the  feelings  and 
opinions  of  their  order.  It  seems  to  have  been  the  aim  of  the 
young  king  to  undo  the  change  which  had  been  silently 
brought  about,  and  to  imitate  the  policy  of  the  contemporary 
sovereigns  of  France  by  choosing  as  his  ministers  men  of  an 
inferior  position,  wholly  dependent  on  the  Crown  for  their 
power,  and  representations  of  nothing  but  the  policy  and  in- 
terests of  their  master.  Piers  Gaveston,  a  foreigner  sprung 
from  a  family  of  Guienne,  had  been  his  friend  and  companion 
during  his  father's  reign,  at  the  close  of  which  he  had  been 
banished  from  the  realm  for  his  share  in  intrigues  which  had 
divided  Edward  from  his  son.  At  the  new  king's  accession 
he  was  at  once  recalled,  created  Earl  of  Cornwall,  and  placed 
at  the  head  of  the  administration.  Gay,  genial,  thriftless, 
Gaveston  showed  in  his  first  acts  the  quickness  and  audacity 
of  Southern  Gaul ;  the  older  ministers  were  dismissed,  all 
claims  of  precedence  or  inheritance  set  aside  in  the  distribu- 
tion of  offices  at  the  coronation,  while  taunts  and  defiances 
goaded  the  proud  baronage  to  fury.  The  favorite  was  a  fine 
soldier,  and  his  lance  unhorsed  his  opponents  in  tourney 
after  tourney.  His  reckless  wit  flung  nicknames  about  the 
Court ;  the  Earl  of  Lancaster  was  "  the  Actor/'  Pembroke 
"  the  Jew,"  Warwick  "  the  Black  Dog."  But  taunt  and  de- 
fiance broke  helplessly  against  the  iron  mass  of  the  baronage. 
After  a  few  months  of  power  the  demand  of  the  Parliament 
for  his  dismissal  could  not  be  resisted,  and  he  was  formally 
banished  from  the  realm.  In  the  following  year  it  was  only 
by  conceding  the  rights  which  his  father  had  sought  to  es- 
tablish of  imposing  import  duties  on  the  merchants  by  their 
own  assent,  that  Edward  procured  a  subsidy  for  the  Scotch 
war.  The  firmness  of  the  baronage  sprang  from  their  hav- 
ing found  a  head  in  the  Earl  of  Lancaster,  son  of  Edmund 
Crouchback.  His  weight  proved  irresistible.  When  Ed- 
ward at  the  close  of  the  Parliament  recalled  Gaveston,  Lan- 
caster withdrew  from  the  royal  Council,  and  a  Parliament 
which  met  in  1310  resolved  that  the  affairs  of  the  realm 
should  be  entrusted  for  a  year  to  a  body  of  twenty-one 
"  Ordainers." 

A  formidable  list  of  "Ordinances"  drawn  np  by  the 
twenty-one  met  Edward  on  his  return  from  a  fruitless  war- 
fare with  the  Scots.  By  this  long  and  important  statute 


264  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Gaveston  was  banished,  other  advisers  were  driven  from  the 
Council,  and  the  Florentine  bankers  whose  loans  had  enabled 
Edward  to  hold  the  baronage  at  bay  sent  out  of 
tlie  realm-  Tlie  customs  duties  imposed  by 
Edward  the  First  were  declared  to  be  illegal. 
Parliaments  were  to  be  called  every  year,  and  in  these  assem- 
blies the  king's  servants  were  to  be  brought,  if  need  were, 
to  justice.  The  great  officers  of  state  were  to  be  appointed 
with  the  counsel  and  consent  of  the  baronage,  and  to  be 
sworn  in  Parliament.  The  same  consent  of  the  barons  in 
Parliament -was  to  be  needful  ere  the  king  could  declare  war 
or  absent  himself  from  the  realm.  As  the  Ordinances  show, 
the  baronage  still  looked  on  Parliament  rather  as  a  political 
organization  of  the  nobles  than  as  a  gathering  of  the  three 
Estates  of  the  realm.  The  lower  clergy  pass  unnoticed  ;  the 
Commons  are  regarded  as  mere  tax-payers  whose  part  was 
still  confined  to  the  presentation  of  petitions  of  grievances 
and  the  grant  of  money.  But  even  in  this  imperfect  fashion 
the  Parliament  was  a  real  representation  of  the  country,  and 
Edward  was  forced  to  assent  to  the  Ordinances  after  a  long 
and  obstinate  struggle.  The  exile  of  Gaveston  was  the  sign 
of  the  barons'  triumph  ;  his  recall  a  few  months  later  re- 
newed a  strife  which  was  only  ended  by  his  capture  in  Scar- 
borough. The  "  Black  Dog"  of  Warwick  had  sworn  that 
the  favorite  should  feel  his  teeth  ;  and  Gaveston,  who  flung 
himself  in  vain  at  the  feet  of  the  Earl  of  Lancaster,  praying 
for  pity  "  from  his  gentle  lord/'  was  beheaded  in  defiance 
of  the  terms  of  his  capitulation  on  Blacklow  Hill.  The 
king's  burst  of  grief  was  as  fruitless  as  his  threats  of  venge- 
ance ;  a  feigned  submission  of  the  conquerors  completed 
the  royal  humiliation,  and  the  barons  knelt  before  Edward 
in  Westminster  Hall  to  receive  a  pardon  which  seemed  the 
deathblow  of  the  royal  power.  But  if  Edward  was  powerless 
to  conquer  the  baronage  he  could  still,  by  evading  the  ob- 
servance of  the  Ordinances,  throw  the  whole  realm  into  con- 
fusion. The  six  years  that  follow  Gaveston's  death  are 
among  the  darkest  in  our  history.  A  terrible  succession  of 
famines  intensified  the  suffering  which  sprang  from  the 
utter  absence  of  all  rule  during  the  dissension  between  the 
barons  and  the  king.  The  overthrow  of  Bannockburn,  and 
the  ravages  of  the  Scots  in  the  North,  brought  shame  on 


THE   KING   AND   THE   BARONAGE.      1290    TO   1327.      205 

England  such  as  it  had  never  known.  At  last  the  capture 
of  Berwick  by  Robert  Bruce  forced  Edward  to  give  way,  the 
Ordinances  were  formally  accepted,  an  amnesty  granted,  and 
a  small  number  of  peers  belonging  to  the  Barons'  party 
added  to  the  great  officers  of  state. 

The  Earl  of  Lancaster,  by  the  union  of  the  four  earldoms 
of  Lincoln,  Leicester,  Derby,  and  Lancaster,  as  well  as  by 
his  royal  blood  (for  like  the  king  he  was  grand- 
son of  Henry  the  Third),  stood  at  the  head  of 
the  English  baronage,  and  the  issue  of  the  long 
struggle  with  Edward  raised  him  for  the  moment  to  supreme 
power  in  the  realm.  But  his  character  seems  to  have  fallen 
far  beneath  the  greatness  of  his  position.  Incapable  of 
governing,  he  could  do  little  but  regard  with  jealousy  the 
new  advisers  on  whom  the  king  now  leaned,  the  older  and  the 
younger  Hugh  Le  Despenser.  The  rise  of  the  younger,  on 
whom  the  king  bestowed  the  county  of  Glamorgan  with  the 
hand  of  its  heiress,  was  rapid  enough  to  excite  general  jeal- 
ousy, and  Lancaster  found  little  difficulty  in  extorting  by 
force  of  arms  his  exile  from  the  kingdom.  But  the  tide  of 
popular  sympathy,  already  wavering,  was  turned  to  the  royal 
cause  by  an  insult  offered  to  the  queen,  against  whom  Lady 
Badlesmere  had  closed  the  doors  of  Ledes  Castle,  and  the  un- 
expected energy  shown  by  Edward  in  avenging  the  insult 
gave  fresh  strength  to  his  cause.  He  found  himself  strong 
enough  to  recall  Despenser,  and  when  Lancaster  convoked 
the  baronage  to  force  him  again  into  exile,  the  weakness  of 
their  party  was  shown  by  the  treasonable  negotiations  into 
which  the  earl  entered  with  the  Scots,  and  by  his  precipitate 
retreat  to  the  north  on  the  advance  of  the  royal  army.  At 
Boroughbridge  his  forces  were  arrested  and  dispersed,  and 
the  earl  himself,  brought  captive  before  Edward  at  Ponte- 
fract,  was  tried  and  condemned  to  death  as  a  traitor.  "  Have 
mercy  on  me,  King  of  Heaven,"  cried  Lancaster,  as  mounted 
on  a  gray  pony  without  a  bridle  he  was  hurried  to  execution, 
"  for  my  earthly  king  has  forsaken  me."  His  death  was 
followed  by  that  of  a  number  of  his  adherents  and  by  the 
captivity  of  others ;  while  a  Parliament  at  York  annulled  the 
proceedings  against  the  Dcspensers,  and  repealed  the  Or- 
dinances. It  is  to  this  Parliament,  however,  and  perhaps  to 
the  victorious  confidence  of  the  rovalists,  that  we  owe  tin- 


HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

famous  provision  which  reveals  the  policy  of  the  Despensers, 
the  provision  that  all  laws  concerning  "  the  estate  of  the 
Crown,  or  of  the  realm  and  people,  shall  be  treated,  accorded, 
and  established  in  Parliaments  by  our  Lord  the  King  and  by 
the  consent  of  the  prelates,  earls,  barons,  and  commonalty 
of  the  realm,  according  as  hath  been  hitherto  accustomed." 
It  would  seem  from  the  tenor  of  this  remarkable  enactment 
that  much  of  the  sudden  revulsion  of  popular  feeling  had 
been  owing  to  the  assumption  of  all  legislative  action  by  the 
baronage  alone.  But  the  arrogance  of  the  Despensers,  the 
utter  failure  of  a  fresh  campaign  against  Scotland,  and  the 
humiliating  truce  for  thirteen  years  which  Edward  was  forced 
to  conclude  with  Robert  Bruce,  soon  robbed  the  Crown 
of  its  temporary  popularity,  and  led  the  way  to  the  sudden 
catastrophe  which  closed  this  disastrous  reign.  It  had  been 
arranged  that  the  queen,  a  sister  of  the  King  of  France, 
should  re-visit  her  home  to  conclude  a  treaty  between  the  two 
countries,  whose  quarrel  was  again  verging  upon  war  ;  and 
her  son,  a  boy  of  twelve  years  old,  followed  her  to  do  homage 
in  his  father's  stead  for  the  duchies  of  Gascony  and  Aquitaine. 
Neither  threats  nor  prayers,  however,  could  induce  either 
wife  or  child  to  return  to  his  court ;  and  the  queen's  con- 
nection with  a  secret  conspiracy  of  the  baronage  was  re- 
vealed when  the  primate  and  nobles  hurried  to  her  standard 
on  her  landing  at  Orwell.  Deserted  by  all,  and  repulsed  by  the 
citizens  of  London  whose  aid  he  implored,  the  king  fled 
hastily  to  the  west  and  embarked  with  the  Despensers  for 
Lundy  Isle  ;  but  contrary  winds  flung  the  fugitives  again  on 
the  Welsh  coast,  where  they  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  new 
Earl  of  Lancaster.  The  younger  Despenser  was  at  once 
hanged  on  a  gibbet  fifty  feet  high,  and  the  king  placed  in 
ward  at  Kenilworth  till  his  fate  could  be  decided  by  a  Parlia- 
ment summoned  for  that  purpose  at  Westminster.  The  Peers 
who  assembled  fearlessly  revived  the  constitutional  usage  of 
the  earlier  English  freedom,  and  asserted  their  right  to  de- 
pose a  king  who  had  proved  himself  unworthy  to  rule.  Not 
a  voice  was  raised  in  Edward's  behalf,  and  only  four  prelates 
protested  when  the  young  prince  was  proclaimed  king  by  ac- 
clamation, and  presented  as  their  sovereign  to  the  multitudes 
without.  The  revolution  soon  took  legal  form  in  a  bill  which 
charged  the  captive  monarch  with  indolence,  incapacity,  the 


BCOTCH   WAK  OF  INDEPENDENCE.      1306  TO   1342.      267 

loss  of  Scotland,  the  violation  of  his  coronation  oath,  and 
oppression  of  the  Church  and  baronage  ;  and  on  the  approval 
of  this  it  was  resolved  that  the  reign  of  Edward  of  Caernarvon 
had  ceased  and  that  the  crown  had  passed  to  his  son,  Ed- 
ward of  Windsor.  A  deputation  of  the  Parliament  proceeded 
to  Kenilworth  to  procure  the  assent  of  the  discrowned  king 
to  his  own  deposition,  and  Edward,  "clad  in  a  plain  black 
gown,"  submitted  quietly  to  his  fate.  Sir  William  Triissel 
at  once  addressed  him  in  words  which  better  than  any  other 
mark  the  true  nature  of  the  step  which  the  Parliament  had 
taken.  "I,  William  Trussel,  proctor  of  the  earls,  barons, 
and  others,  having  for  this  full  and  sufficient  power,  do  render 
and  give  back  to  you,  Edward,  once  King  of  England,  the 
homage  and  fealty  of  the  persons  named  in  my  procuracy  ; 
and  acquit  and  discharge  them  thereof  in  the  best  manner 
that  law  and  custom  will  give.  And  I  now  make  protestation 
in  their  name  that  they  will  no  longer  be  in  your  fealty  and 
allegiance,  nor  claim  to  hold  anything  of  you  as  king,  but 
will  account  you  hereafter  as  a  private  person,  without  any 
manner  of  royal  dignity."  A  significant  act  followed  these 
emphatic  words.  Sir  Thomas  Blount,  the  steward  of  the 
household,  broke  his  staff  of  office,  a  ceremony  only  used  at 
a  king's  death,  and  declared  that  all  persons  engaged  in  the 
royal  service  were  discharged.  In  the  following  September 
the  king  was  murdered  in  Berkeley  Castle. 

Section  VI.— The  Scotch  War  of  Independence,  1306—1342. 

[Authorities.— Mainly  the  contemporary  English  Chroniclers  and  state  docu- 
ments for  the  reigns  of  the  three  Edwards.  John  Harbour's  "  Bruce,"  the  great 
legendary  storehouse  for  his  hero's  adventures,  is  historically  worthless.  Mr. 
Burton's  is  throughout  the  best  modern  account  of  the  time.] 

To  obtain  a  clear  view  of  the  constitutional  struggle  be- 
tween the  kings  and  the  baronage,  we  have  deferred  to  its 
close  an  account  of  the  great  contest  which  raged  through- 
out the  whole  period  in  the  north. 

With  the  Convocation  of  Perth  the  conquest  and  settlement 
of  Scotland  seemed  complete.  Edward  I.,  in  fact,  was  pre- 
paring for  a  joint  Parliament  of  the  two  nations 
at  Carlisle,  when  the  conquered  country  suddenly 
sprang  again  to  arms  under  Robert  Bruce,  the 


268  HISTOKY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

grandson  of  one  of  the  original  claimants  of  the  crown.  The 
Norman  house  of  Bruce  formed  a  part  of  the  Yorkshire  bar- 
onage, but  it  had  acquired  through  intermarriages  the  Earl- 
dom of  Carrick  and  the  Lordship  of  Annandale.  Both  the 
claimant  and  his  son  had  been  pretty  steadily  on  the  English 
side  in  the  contest  with  Balliol  and  Wallace,  and  Eobert  had 
himself  been  trained  in  the  English  court,  and  stood  high 
in  the  king's  favor.  But  the  withdrawal  of  Balliol  gave  a 
new  force  to  his  claims  upon  the  crown,  and  the  discovery 
of  an  intrigue  which  he  had  set  on  foot  with  the  Bishop  of 
St.  Andrews  so  roused  Edward's  jealousy  that  Bruce  fled  for 
his  life  across  the  border.  In  the  church  of  the  Gray  Friars 
at  Dumfries  he  met  Comyn,  the  Lord  of  Badenoch,  to  whose 
treachery  he  attributed  the  disclosure  of  his  plans,  and  after 
the  interchange  of  a  few  hot  words  struck  him  with  his  dag- 
ger to  the  ground.  It  was  an  outrage  that  admitted  of  no 
forgiveness,  and  Bruce  for  very  safety  was  forced  to  assume 
the  crown  six  weeks  after  in  the  Abbey  of  Scone.  The  news 
roused  Scotland  again  to  arms,  and  summoned  Edward  to  a 
fresh  contest  with  his  unconquerable  foe.  But  the  murder 
of  Comyn  had  changed  the  king's  mood  to  a  terrible  pitiless- 
ness  ;  he  threatened  death  against  all  concerned  in  the  out- 
rage, and  exposed  the  Countess  of  Buchan,  who  had  set  the 
crown  on  Bruce's  head,  in  a  cage  or  open  chamber  built  for 
the  purpose  iu  one  of  the  towers  of  Berwick.  At  the  solemn 
feast  which  celebrated  his  son's  knighthood  Edward  vowed 
on  the  swan,  which  formed  the  chief  dish  at  the  banquet,  to 
devote  the  rest  of  his  days  to  exact  vengeance  from  the 
murderer  himself.  But  even  at  the  moment  of  the  vow, 
Bruce  was  already  flying  for  his  life  to  the  western  islands. 
"  Henceforth/'  he  had  said  to  his  wife  at  their  coronation, 
"  thou  art  queen  of  Scotland  and  I  king."  "  I  fear,"  replied 
Mary  Bruce,  "  we  are  only  playing  at  royalty,  like  children 
in  their  games."  The  play  was  soon  turned  into  bitter 
earnest.  A  small  English  force  under  Aymer  de  Valence 
sufficed  to  rout  the  disorderly  levies  which  gathered  round 
the  new  monarch,  and  the  flight  of  Bruce  left  his  followers 
at  Edward's  mercy.  Noble  after  noble  was  hurried  to  the 
block.  The  Earl  of  Athole  pleaded  kindred  with  royalty  ; 
"  His  only  privilege,"  burst  forth  the  king.  "  shall  be  that 
of  being  hanged  on  a  higher  gallows  than  the  rest."  Knights 


SCOTCH    WAR   OF   INDEPENDENCE.      1306   TO   1342.      269 

and  priests  were  strung  up  side  by  side  by  the  English  justi- 
ciars ;  while  the  wife  and  daughter  of  Robert  Bruce  were 
flung  into  prison.  Bruce  himself  had  offered  to  capitulate 
to  Prince  Kdward,  but  the  offer  only  roused  the  old  king  to 
fury.  "Who  is  so  bold,"  he  cried,  "as  to  treat  with  our 
traitors  without  our  knowledge  ?"  and  rising  from  his  sick- 
bed he  led  his  army  northwards  to  complete  the  conquest. 
But  the  hand  of  death  was  upon  him,  and  in  the  very  sight 
of  Scotland  the  old  man  breathed  his  last  at  Burgh-upon- 
Sands. 

The  death  of  Edward  arrested  only  for  a  moment  the  ad- 
vance of  his  army  to  the  north.  The  Earl  of  Pembroke  led  it 
across  the  border,  and  found  himself  master  of  the 
country  without  a  blow.  Bruce's  career  became  that 
of  a  desperate  adventurer,  for  even  the  Highland 
chiefs  in  whose  fastnesses  he  found  shelter  were  bitterly  hostile 
to  one  who  claimed  to  be  king  of  their  foes  in  the  Lowlands. 
It  was  this  adversity  that  transformed  the  murderer  of  Comyn 
into  the  noble  leader  of  a  nation's  cause.  Strong  and  of  com- 
manding presence,  brave  and  genial  in  temper,  Bruce  bore 
the  hardships  of  his  career  with  a  courage  and  hopefulness 
which  never  failed.  In  the  legends  which  clustered  round 
his  name  we  see  him  listening  in  Highland  glens  to  the  bay 
of  the  bloodhounds  on  his  track,  or  holding  single-handed  a 
pass  against  a  crowd  of  savage  clansmen.  Sometimes  the 
little  band  which  clung  to  him  were  forced  to  support  them- 
selves by  hunting  or  fishing,  sometimes  to  break  up  for  safety 
as  their  enemies  tracked  them  to  the  lair.  Bruce  himself  had 
more  than  once  to  fling  off  his  shirt  of  mail  and  scramble 
barefoot  for  very  life  up  the  crags.  Little  by  little,  however, 
the  dark  sky  cleared.  The  English  pressure  relaxed,  as  the 
struggle  between  Edward  and  his  barons  grew  fiercer.  James 
Douglas,  the  darling  of  Scotch  story,  was  the  first  of  the 
Lowland  barons  to  rally  again  to  the  Bruce,  and  his  daring 
gave  heart  to  the  king's  cause.  Once  he  surprised  his  own 
house,  which  had  been  given  to  an  Englishman,  ate  the  dinner 
which  had  been  prepared  for  its  new  owner,  slew  his  cap- 
tives, and  tossed  their  bodies  on  to  a  pile  of  wood  gathered 
at  the  castle  gate.  Then  he  staved  in  the  wine-vats  that  the 
wine  might  mingle  with  their  blood,  and  set  house  and  wood- 
pile on  fire.  A  terrible  ferocity  mingled  with  heroism  in  the 


270  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

work  of  freedom,  but  the  revival  of  the  country  went  steadily 
on.  Brace's  "harrying  of  Buchau"  after  the  defeat  of  its 
Earl,  who  had  joined  the  English  army,  at  last  fairly  turned 
the  tide  of  success.  Edinburgh,  Roxburgh,  Perth,  and  most 
of  the  Scotch  fortresses  fell  one  by  one  into  King  Robert's 
hands.  The  clergy  met  in  council  and  owned  him  as  their 
lawful  lord.  Gradually  the  Scotch  barons  who  still  held  to  the 
English  cause  were  coerced  into  submission,  and  Bruce  found 
himself  strong  enough  to  invest  Stirling,  the  last  and  the 
most  important  of  the  Scotch  fortresses  which  held  out  for 
Edward. 

Stirling  was  in  fact  the  key  of  Scotland,  and  its  danger 

roused  England  out  of  its  civil  strife  to  a  vast  effort  for  the 

recovery  of  its  prey.     Thirty  thousand  horsemen 

Bannock  forme(j  the  fighting  part  of  the  great  army  which 
followed  Edward  to  the  north,  and  a  host  of  wild 
marauders  had  been  summoned  from  Ireland  and  Wales  to  its 
support.  The  army  which  Bruce  had  gathered  to  oppose  the 
inroad  was  formed  almost  wholly  of  footmen,  and  was  stationed 
to  the  south  of  Stirling  on  a  rising  ground  flanked  by  a  little 
brook,  the  Bannock  burn,  which  gave  its  name  to  the  engage- 
ment. Again  two  systems  of  warfare  were  brought  face  to 
face  as  they  had  been  brought  at  Falkirk,  for  Robert,  like 
Wallace,  drew  up  his  force  in  solid  squares  or  circles  of  spear- 
men. The  English  were  dispirited  at  the  very  outset  by  the 
failure  of  an  attempt  to  relieve  Stirling,  and  by  the  issue 
of  a  single  combat  between  Bruce  and  Henry  de  Bohun,  a 
knight  who  bore  down  upon  him  as  he  was  riding  peacefully 
along  the  front  of  his  army.  Robert  was  mounted  on  a  small 
hackney  and  held  only  a  light  battle-ax  in  his  hand,  but, 
warding  off  his  opponent's  spear,  he  cleft  his  skull  with  so 
terrible  a  blow  that  the  handle  of  the  ax  was  shattered  in 
his  grasp.  At  the  opening  of  the  battle  the,  English  archers 
were  thrown  forward  to  rake  the  Scottish  squares,  but  they 
were  without  support,  and  were  easily  dispersed  by  a  hand- 
ful of  horse  whom  Bruce  had  held  in  reserve  for  the  purpose. 
The  body  of  men-at-arms  next  flung  themselves  on  the  Scot- 
tish front,  but  their  charge  was  embarrassed  by  the  narrow 
space  along  which  the  line  was  forced  to  move,  and  the 
steady  resistance  of  the  squares  soon  threw  the  knighthood 
into  disorder.  "  The  horses  that  were  stickit/'  says  an 


SCOTCH   WAK   OF    INDEPENDENCE.      130G   TO   1342.      271 

exulting  Scotch  writer,  "rushed  and  reeled  right  rudely." 
In  the  moment  of  failure  the  sight  of  a  body  of  camp-fol- 
lowers, whom  they  mistook  for  reinforcements  to  the  enemy, 
spread  panic  through  the  English  host.  It  broke  in  a  head- 
long rout.  Its  thousands  of  brilliant  horsemen  were  soon 
floundering  in  pits  which  had  guarded  the  level  ground  to 
Bruce's  left,  or  riding  in  wild  haste  for  the  border.  Few 
however  were  fortunate  enough  to  reach  it.  Edward  him- 
self, with  a  body  of  five  hundred  knights,  succeeded  in  escap- 
ing to  Dunbar  and  the  sea.  But  the  flower  of  his  knight- 
hood fell  into  the  hands  of  the  victors,  while  the  Irishry  and 
the  footmen  were  ruthlessly  cut  down  by  the  country  folk 
as  they  fled.  For  centuries  after,  the  rich  plunder  of  the 
English  camp  left  its  traces  on  the  treasure  and  vestment 
rolls  of  castle  and  abbey  throughout  the  Lowlands. 

Terrible  as  was  the  blow,  England  could  not  humble  her- 
self to  relinquish  her  claim  on  the  Scottish  crown.  With 
equal  pertinacity  Bruce  refused  all  negotiation  ^6  Inde_ 
while  the  royal  title  was  refused  to  him,  and  pendence  of 
steadily  pushed  on  the  recovery  of  his  southern  Scotland, 
dominions.  Berwick  was  at  last  forced  to  surrender,  and 
held  against  a  desperate  attempt  at  its  recapture  ;  while  bar- 
barous forays  of  the  borderers  under  Douglas  wasted  North- 
umberland. Again  the  strife  between  the  Crown  and  the 
baronage  was  suspended  to  allow  the  march  of  a  great  English 
army  to  the  north  ;  but  Bruce  declined  an  engagement  till 
the  wasted  Lowlands  starved  the  invaders  into  a  ruinous 
retreat.  The  failure  forced  England  to  stoop  to  a  truce  for 
thirteen  years,  in  the  negotiation  of  which  Bruce  was  suf- 
fered to  take  the  royal  title.  But  the  truce  ceased  legally 
with  Edward's  deposition.  Troops  gathered' on  either  side, 
and  Edward  Balliol,  a  son  of  the  former  king,  John,  was 
solemnly  received  as  a  vassal-king  of  Scotland  at  the  English 
court.  Robert  was  disabled  by  leprosy  from  taking  the  field 
in  person,  but  the  insult  roused  him  to  hurl  his  marauders 
again  over  the  border  under  Douglas  and  Randolph.  An 
eye-witness  has  painted  for  us  the  Scotch  army,  as  it  appeared 
in  this  campaign  :  "  It  consisted  of  four  thousand  men-at- 
arms,  knights  and  esquires,  well  mounted,  besides  twenty 
thousand  men  bold  and  hardy,  armed  after  the  manner  of 
their  country,  and  mounted  upon  little  hackneys  that  are 


272  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

never  tied  up  or  dressed,  but  turned  immediately  after  the 
day's  march  to  pasture  on  the  heath  or  in  the  fields.  .  .  . 
They  bring  no  carriages  with  them  on  account  of  the 
mountains  they  have  to  pass  in  Northumberland,  neither  do 
they  carry  with  them  any  provisions  of  bread  and  wine,  for 
their  habits  of  sobriety  are  such  in  time  of  war  that  they  will 
live  for  a  long  time  on  flesh  half-sodden  without  bread,  and 
drink  the  river  water  without  wine.  They  have  therefore  no 
occasion  for  pots  or  pans,  for  they  dress  the  flesh  of  the 
cattle  in  their  skins  after  they  have  flayed  them,  and  being 
sure  to  find  plenty  of  them  in  the  country  which  they  in- 
vade, they  carry  none  with  them.  Under  the  flaps  of  his 
saddle  each  man  carries  a  broad  piece  of  metal,  behind  him 
a  little  bag  of  oatmeal ;  when  they  have  eaten  too  much  of 
the  sodden  flesh  and  their  stomach  appears  weak  and  empty, 
they  set  this  plate  over  the  fire,  knead  the  meal  with  water, 
and  when  the  plate  is  hot  put  a  little  of  the  paste  upon  it  in 
a  thin  cake  like  a  biscuit  which  they  eat  to  warm  their  stom- 
achs. It  is  therefore  no  wonder  that  they  perform  a  longer 
day's  march  than  other  soldiers."  Against  such  a  foe  the 
English  troops  who  marched  under  their  boy-king  to  protect 
the  border  were  utterly  helpless.  At  one  time  the  army  lost 
it's  way  in  the  vast  border  waste  ;  at  another  all  traces  of  the 
enemy  had  disappeared,  and  an  offer  of  knighthood  and  a 
hundred  marks  was  made  to  any  who  could  tell  where 
the  Scots  were  encamped.  But  when  found  their  position 
behind  the  Wear  proved  unassailable,  and  after  a  bold  sally 
on  the  English  camp  Douglas  foiled  an  attempt  at  inter- 
cepting him  by  a  clever  retreat.  The  English  levies  broke 
hopelessly  up,  and  a  fresh  foray  on  Northumberland  forced 
the  English  court  to  submit  to  peace.  By  the  Treaty  of 
Northampton  the  independence  of  Scotland  was  formally 
recognized,  and  Bruce  acknowledged  as  its  king. 

The  pride  of  England,  however,  had  been  too  much  aroused 
by  the  struggle  to  bear  easily  its  defeat.     The  first  result  of  the 
Scotland  and  treaty  was  the  overthrow  of  the  government  which 
Edward  the  concluded  it,  a  result  hastened  by  the  pride  of  its 
Third.      head,  Roger  Mortimer,  and  by  his  exclusion  of  the 
rest  of  the  nobles  from  all  share  in  the  administration  of  the 
realm.    The  first  efforts  to  shake  Roger's  power  were  unsuccess- 
ful :  a  league  headed  by  the  Earl  of  Lancaster  broke  up  without 


SCOTCH    WAK   OF   INDEPENDENCE.      1306   TO   1342.      273 

result ;  and  the  king's  uncle,  the  Earl  of  Kent,  was  actually 
brought  to  the  block,  before  the  young  king  himself  interfered 
in  the  struggle.  Entering  the  Council  chamber  in  Notting- 
ham Castle,  with  a  force  which  he  had  introduced  through  a 
secret  passage  in  the  rock  on  which  it  stands,  Edward  arrested 
Mortimer  with  his  own  hands,  hurried  him  to  execution, 
and  assumed  the  control  of  affairs.  His  first  care  was  to 
restore  good  order  throughout  the  country,  which  under  the 
late  government  had  fallen  into  ruin,  and  to  free  his  hands 
by  a  peace  with  France  for  further  enterprises  in  the  North. 
Fortune  indeed,  seemed  at  last  to  have  veered  to  the  English 
side  ;  the  death  of  Bruce  only  a  year  after  the  Treaty  of 
Northampton  left  the  Scottish  throne  to  a  child  of  but  eight 
years  old,  and  the  internal  difficulties  of  the  realm  broke  out 
in  civil  strife.  To  the  great  barons  on  either  side  the  border 
the  late  peace  involved  serious  losses,  for  many  of  the  Scotch 
houses  held  large  estates  in  England,  as  many  of  the  English 
lords  held  large  estates  in  Scotland  ;  and  although  the  treaty 
had  provided  for  their  claims,' they  had  in  each  case  been 
practically  set  aside.  It  is  this  discontent  of  the  barons  at  the 
new  settlement  which  explains  the  sudden  success  of  Edward 
Balliol  in  his  snatch  at  the  Scottish  throne.  In  spite  of 
King  Edward's  prohibition,  he  sailed  from  England  at  the 
head  of  a  body  of  nobles  who  claimed  estates  in  the  north, 
landed  on  the  shores  of  Fife,  and,  after  repulsing  with  im- 
mense loss  an  army  which  attacked  him  near  Perth,  was 
crowned  at  Scone,  while  David  Bruce  fled  helplessly  to  France. 
Edward  had  given  no  open  aid  to  the  enterprise,  but  the 
crisis  tempted  his  ambition,  and  he  demanded  and  obtained 
from  Balliol  an  acknowledgment  of  the  English  suzerainty. 
The  acknowledgment,  however,  was  fatal  to  Balliol  himself. 
He  was  at  once  driven  from  his  realm,  and  Berwick,  which 
he  had  agreed  to  surrender  to  Edward,  was  strongly  garrisoned 
against  an  English  attack.  The  town  was  soon  besieged,  but 
a  Scotch  army  under  the  regent  Douglas,  brother  to  the 
famous  Sir  James,  advanced  to  its  relief,  and  attacked  a  cover- 
ing force,  which  was  encamped  on  the  strong  position  of 
Halidon  Hill.  The  English  bowmen,  however,  vindicated 
the  fame  they  had  first  won  at  Falkirk,  and  were  soon  to 
crown  in  the  victory  of  Crecy  ;  and  the  Scotch  only  struggled 
through  the  marsh  which  covered  the  English  front  to  be 
18 


274  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

riddled  with  a  storm  of  arrows,  and  to  break  in  utter  rout. 
The  battle  decided  the  fate  of  Berwick,  and  from  that  time 
the  town  remained  the  one  part  of  Edward's  conquests  which 
was  preserved  by  the  English  crown.  Fragment  as  it  was,  it 
was  always  viewed  legally  as  representing  the  realm  of  which 
it  had  once  formed  a  part.  As  Scotland,  it  had  its  chancellor, 
chamberlain,  and  other  officers  of  State  ;  and  the  peculiar 
heading  of  Acts  of  Parliament  enacted  for  England  "  and 
the  town  of  Berwick-upon-Tweed  "  still  preserves  the  memory 
of  its  peculiar  position.  Balliol  was  restored  to  his  throne 
by  the  conquerors,  and  his  formal  cession  of  the  Lowlands 
to  England  rewarded  their  aid.  During  the  next  three  years 
Edward  persisted  in  the  line  of  policy  he  had  adopted,  retain- 
ing his  hold  over  Southern  Scotland,  and  aiding  his  sub-king 
Balliol  in  campaign  after  campaign  against  the  despairing 
efforts  of  the  nobles  who  still  adhered  to  the  house  of  Bruce. 
His  perseverance  was  all  but  crowned  with  success,  when  the 
outbreak  of  war  with  France  saved  Scotland  by  drawing  the 
strength  of  England  across  the  Channel.  The  patriot  party 
drew  again,  together.  Balliol  found  himself  at  last  without 
an  adherent  and  withdrew  to  the  Court  of  Edward,  while 
David  returned  to  his  kingdom,  and  won  back  the  chief  fast- 
nesses of  the  Lowlands.  The  freedom  of  Scotland  was,  in  fact, 
secured.  From  a  war  of  conquest  and  patriotic  resistance 
the  struggle  died  into  a  petty  strife  between  two  angry  neigh- 
bors, which  became  a  mere  episode  in  the  larger  contest 
between  England  and  France. 


EDWARD   THE   THIRD.      1336   TO   1360.  275 


CHAPTER  V. 
THE  HUNDRED  YEARS'  WAR. 

1336—1431. 
Section  i.— Edward  the  Third.    1336—1360. 

[Authorities.— The  concluding  part  of  the  chronicle  of  Walter  of  Heminburgh 
or  Hemingford  seems  to  have  been  jotted  down  as  news  of  the  passing  events 
reached  its  author  ;  it  ends  at  the  battle  of  Crecy.  Hearne  has  published  an- 
other contemporary  account  by  Robert  of  Avesbury,  which  closes  in  1356.  A 
third  account  by  Knyghton,  a  canon  of  Leicester,  will  be  found  in  the  collection 
of  Twysden.  At  the  end  of  this  century  and  the  beginning  of  the  next  the  annals 
that  had  been  carried  on  in  the  Abbey  of  St.  Albans  were  thrown  together  by 
Walsingham  in  the  "  Historia  Anglicana  "  which  bears  his  name,  a  compilation 
whose  history  is  given  in  the  prefaces  to  the  "  Chronica  Monasterii  S.  Albani" 
(Rolls  Series).  Rymer's  Fcedera  is  rich  in  documents  for  this  period,  and  from 
this  time  we  have  a  storehouse  of  political  and  social  information  in  the  Parlia- 
mentary Rolls.  For  the  French  war  itself  our  primary  authority  is  the  Chronicle 
of  Jehan  le  Bel,  a  canon  of  S.  Lambert  of  Liege,  who  had  himself  served  in  Ed- 
ward's campaign  against  the  Scots,  and  spent  the  rest  of  his  life  at  the  court  of 
John  of  Hainault.  Up  to  the  Treaty  of  Bretigny,  where  it  closes,  Froissart  has 
done  little  more  than  copy  this  work,  making  however  large  additions  from  his 
own  inquiries,  especially  in  the  Flemish  and  Breton  campaigns  and  the  account 
of  Crecy.  A  Hainaulter  of  Valenciennes,  Froissart  held  a  post  in  Queen  Philippa's 
household  from  1361  to  1309;  and  under  this  influence  produced  in  1373  the  first 
edition  of  his  well-known  Chronicle.  A  later  edition  is  far  less  English  in  tone, 
and  a  third  version,  begun  by  him  in  his  old  age  after  long  absence  from  England, 
is  distinctly  French  in  its  sympathies.  Froissart's  vivacity  and  picturesqueness 
blind  us  to  the  inaccuracy  of  his  details  ;  as  an  historical  authority  he  is  of  little 
value.  The  incidental  mention  of  Crecy  and  the  later  English  expeditions  by 
Villani  in  his  great  Florentine  Chronicle  are  important.  The  best  modern 
account  of  this  period  is  that  by  Mr.  W.  Longman,  "  History  of  Edward  III."  Mr. 
Morley  ("  English  Writers  ")  has  treated  in  great  detail  of  Chaucer.  J 

[Dr.  Stubbs'  "  Constitutional  History  "  (Vol.  ii.),  published  since  this  chapter 
was  written,  deals  with  the  whole  period. — Ed.} 

IN  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  great  movement 
towards  national  unity  which  had  begun  under  the  last  of 
the  Norman  kings  seemed  to  have  reached  its  end,     Engird 
and  the  perfect  fusion  of  conquered  and  conquerors   under  Ed- 
into  an  English  people  was  marked  by  the  disuse,    ward  m> 
even  amongst  the  nobler  classes,  of  the  French  tongue.     In 
spite   of  the  efforts   of  the  grammar  schools,  and  of  the 
strength  of  fashion,  English  was  winning  its  way  through- 


276  HISTOKY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

out  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third  to  its  final  triumph  in 
that  of  his  grandson.  "  Children  in  school,"  says  a  writer 
of  the  earlier  reign,  ' l  against  the  usage  and  manner  of  all 
other  nations,  be  compelled  for  to  leave  their  own  language, 
and  for  to  construe  their  lessons  and  their  things  in  French, 
and  so  they  have  since  Normans  first  came  into  England. 
Also  gentlemen's  children  be  taught  to  speak  French  from 
the  time  that  they  be  rocked  in  their  cradle,  and  know  how 
to  speak  and  play  with  a  child's  toy;  and  uplandish  (or 
country)  men  will  liken  themselves  to  gentlemen,  and  strive 
with  great  busyness  to  speak  French  for  to  be  more  told  of." 
"  This  manner,"  adds  a  translator  of  Richard's  time,  "  was 
much  used  before  the  first  murrain  (the  plague  of  1349),  and 
is  since  somewhat  changed ;  for  John  Cornwal,  a  master  of 
grammar,  changed  the  lore  in  grammar  school  and  construing 
of  French  into  English  ;  and  Eichard  Pencrych  learned  this 
manner  of  teaching  of  him,  as  others  did  of  Pencrych.  So 
that  now,  the  year  of  our  Lord,  1385,  and  of  the  second  King 
Richard  after  the  Conquest  nine,  in  all  the  grammar  schools 
of  England  children  leaveth  French,  and  constrneth  and 
learneth  in  English."  A  more  formal  note  of  the  change  is 
found  when  English  was  ordered  to  be  used  in  courts  of  law 
in  1362  "  because  the  French  tongue  is  much  unknown  ;" 
and  in  the  following  year  it  was  employed  by  the  Chancellor 
in  opening  Parliament.  Bishops  began  to  preach  in  English, 
and  the  English  tracts  of  Wyclif  made  it  once  more  a  literary 
tongue.  This  drift  towards  a  general  use  of  the  national 
tongue  told  powerfully  on  literature.  The  influence  of  the 
French  romances  everywhere  tended  to  make  French  the  one 
literary  language  at  the  opening  of  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  in  England  this  influence  had  been  backed  by  the  French 
tone  of  the  court  of  Henry  the  Third  and  the  three  Edwards. 
But  at  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third  the  long 
French  romances  needed  to  be  translated  even  for  knightly 
hearers.  "  Let  clerks  indite  in  Latin,"  says  the  author  of  the 
"  Testament  of  Love,"  "and  let  Frenchmen  in  their  French 
also  indite  their  quaint  terms,  for  it  is  kindly  to  their  mouths  ; 
and  let  us  show  our  fantasies  in  such  wordes  as  we  learned  of 
our  mother's  tongue."  But  the  new  national  life  afforded 
nobler  material  than  "  fantasies  "  now  for  English  literature. 
With  the  completion  of  the  work  of  national  unity  had  come 


EDWARD   THE   THIKD.      1336   TO   1360.  277 

the  completion  of  the  work  of  national  freedom.  Under  the 
first  Edward  the  Parliament  had  vindicated  its  right  to  the 
control  of  taxation,  under  the  second  it  had  advanced  from 
the  removal  of  ministers  to  the  deposition  of  a  king,  under 
the  third  it  gave  its  voice  on  questions  of  peace  and  war,  con- 
trolled expenditure,  and  regulated  the  course  of  civil  admin- 
istration. ,The  vigor  of  English  life  showed  itself  socially 
in  the  wide  extension  of  commerce,  in  the  rapid  growth  of 
the  woolen  trade,  and  the  increase  of  manufactures  after 
the  settlement  of  Flemish  weavers  on  the  eastern  coast ;  in 
the  progress  of  the  towns,  fresh  as  they  were  from  the 
victory  of  the  craft-gilds  ;  and  in  the  development  of  agri- 
culture through  the  division  of  lands,  and  the  rise  of  the 
tenant  farmer  and  the  freeholder.  It  gave  nobler  signs  of 
its  activity  in  the  spirit  of  national  independence  and  moral 
earnestness  which  awoke  at  the  call  of  AVyclif.  New  forces 
of  thought  and  feeling,  which  were  destined  to  tell  on  every 
age  of  our  later  history,  broke  their  way  through  the  crust  of 
feudalism  in  the  socialist  revolt  of  the  Lollards,  and  a  sudden 
burst  of  military  glory  threw  its  glamour  over  the  age  of 
Crecy  and  Poitiers. 

It  is  this  new  gladness  of  a  great  people  which  utters  itself 
in  the  verse  of  Geoffrey  Chaucer.  Chaucer  was  born  about 
1340,  the  son  of  a  London  vintner  who  lived  in 
Thames  Street ;  and  it  was  in  London  that  the  Chaucer, 
bulk  of  his  life  was  spent.  His  family,  though 
not  noble,  seems  to  have  been  of  some  importance,  for  from 
the  opening  of  his  career  we  find  Chaucer  in  close  connection 
with  the  Court.  At  sixteen  he  was  made  page  to  the  wife  of 
Lionel  of  Clarence  ;  at  nineteen  he  first  bore  arms  in  the 
campaign  of  1359.  But  he  was  luckless  enough  to  be  made 
prisoner  ;  and  from  the  time  of  his  release  after  the  treaty  of 
Bretigny  he  took  no  further  share  in  the  military  enterprises 
of  his  time.  He  seems  again  to  have  returned  to  service 
about  the  Court,  and  it  was  now  that  his  first  poems  made 
their  appearance,  and  from  this  time  John  of  Gaunt  may 
be  looked  upon  as  his  patron.  He  was  employed  in  seven 
diplomatic  missions  which  were  probably  connected  with  the 
financial  straits  of  the  Crown,  and  three  of  these,  in  1372, 
1374,  and  1378,  carried  him.  to  Italy.  He  visited  Genoa  and 
the  brilliant  court  of  the  Visconti  at  Milan  ;  at  Florence, 


278  HISTORY    OF    THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

where  the  memory  of  Dante,  the  "great  master"  whom  he 
commemorates  so  reverently  in  his  verse,  was  still  living,  he 
may  have  met  Boccaccio  ;  at  Padua,  like  his  own  clerk  of 
Oxenford,  he  possibly  caught  the  story  of  Griseldis  from  the 
lips  of  Petrarca.  He  was  a  busy,  practical  worker  ;  Comp- 
troller of  the  Customs  in  1374,  of  the  Petty  Customs  in  1382, 
a  member  of  the  Commons  in  the  Parliament  of  1386,  and 
from  1389  to  1391  Clerk  of  the  Eoyal  Works,  busy  with  build- 
ing at  Westminster,  Windsor,  and  the  Tower.  A  single  por- 
trait has  preserved  for  us  his  forked  beard,  his  dark-colored 
dress,  the  knife  and  pen-case  at  his  girdle,  and  we  may  sup- 
plement this  portrait  by  a  few  vivid  touches  of  his  own. 
The  sly,  elvish  face,  the  quick  walk,  the  plump  figure  and 
portly  waist  were  those  of  a  genial  and  humorous  man  ;  but 
men  jested  at  his  silence,  his  love  of  study.  "  Thou  lookest 
as  thou  wouldest  find  an  hare,"  laughs  the  Host,  in  the 
"  Canterbury  Tales,"  "  and  ever  on  the  ground  I  see  thee 
stare."  He  heard  little  of  his  neighbors'  talk  when  office 
work  was  over.  "  Thou  goest  home  to  thy  own  house  anon, 
and  also  dumb  as  any  stone  thou  sittest  at  another  book  till 
fully  dazed  is  thy  look,  and  livest  thus  as  an  heremite,  al- 
though," he  adds  slyly,  "thy  abstinence  is  lite"  (little). 
But  of  this  abstraction  from  his  fellows  there  is  no  trace  in 
his  verse.  No  poetry  was  ever  more  human  than  Chaucer's  ; 
none  ever  came  more  frankly  and  genially  home  to  its 
readers.  The  first  note  of  his  song  is  a  note  of  freshness  and 
gladness.  "  Of  ditties  and  of  songes  glad,  the  which  he  for 
my  sake  made,  the  land  fulfilled  is  over  all,"  Gower  makes 
Love  say  in  his  lifetime  ;  and  the  impression  of  gladness  re- 
mains just  as  fresh  now  that  four  hundred  years  have  passed 
away.  The  historical  character  of  Chaucer's  work  lies  on  its 
surface.  It  stands  out  in  vivid  contrast  with  the  poetic  litera- 
ture from  the  heart  of  which  it  sprang.  The  long  French 
romances  were  the  product  of  an  age  of  wealth  and  ease,  of 
indolent  curiosity,  of  a  fanciful  and  self-indulgent  sentiment. 
Of  the  great  passions  which  gave  life  to  the  Middle  Ages,  that 
of  religious  enthusiasm  had  degenerated  into  the  pretty  con- 
ceits of  Mariolatry,  that  of  war  into  the  extravagances  of 
Chivalry.  Love,  indeed,  remained  ;  it  was  the  one  theme  of 
troubadour  and  trouvere,  but  it  was  a  love  of  refinement,  of 
romantic  follies,  of  scholastic  discussions,  of  sensuous  enjoy- 


EDWAUD   THE   THIKD.       1336    TO    1360.  -79 

ment — a  plaything  rather  than  a  passion.  Nature  had  to  re- 
flect the  pleasant  indolence  of  man  ;  the  song  of  the  minstrel 
moved  through  a  perpetual  May-time ;  the  grass  was  ever 
green  ;  the  music  of  the  lark  and  the  nightingale  rang  out 
from  field  and  thicket.  There  was  a  gay  avoidance  of  all 
that  is  serious,  moral,  or  reflective  in  man's  life  :  life  was  too 
amusing  to  be  serious,  too  piquant,  too  sentimental,  too  full 
of  interest  and  gaiety  and  chat.  It  was  an  age  of  talk  : 
"Mirth  is  none,"  says  the  Host,  "to  ride  on  by  the  way 
dumb  as  a  stone  ;  "  and  the  trouvere  aimed  simply  at  being 
the  most  agreeable  talker  of  his  day.  His  romances,  his 
rimes  of  Sir  Tristram,  his  Romance  of  the  Rose,  are  full  of 
color  and  fantasy,  endless  in  detail,  but  with  a  sort  of  gor- 
geous idleness  about  their  very  length,  the  minuteness  of 
their  description  of  outer  things,  the  vagueness  of  their  touch 
when  it  passes  to  the  subtler  inner  world.  It  was  with  this 
literature  that  Chaucer  had  till  now  been  familiar,  and  it  was 
this  which  he  followed  in  his  earlier  work.  But  from  the 
time  of  his  visits  to  Milan  and  Genoa  his  sympathies  drew  him 
not  to  the  dying  verse  of  France,  but  to  the  new  and  mighty 
upgrowth  of  poetry  in  Italy.  Dante's  eagle  looks  at  him 
from  the  sun.  "Fi'aunces  Petrark,  the  laureat  poete,"  is  to 
him  one  "  whose  rethorique  sweete  enlurnyned  al  Itail  of 
poetrie."  The  "  Troilus"  is  an  enlarged  English  version  of 
Boccaccio's  '"  Filostrato,"  the  Knight's  Tale  bears  slight 
traces  of  his  Teseide.  It  was,  indeed,  the  "  Decameron " 
which  suggested  the  very  form  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales. " 
But  even  while  changing,  as  it  were,  the  front  of  English 
poetry,  Chaucer  preserves  his  own  distinct  personality.  If 
he  quizzes  in  the  rime  of  Sir  Thopaz  the  wearisome  idleness 
of  the  French  romance,  he  retains  all  that  wa,s  worth  retain- 
ing of  the  French  temper,  its  rapidity  and  agility  of  move- 
ment, its  lightness  and  brilliancy  of  touch,  its  airy  mockery, 
its  gaiety  and  good  humor,  its  critical  coolness  and  self-control. 
The  French  wit  quickens  in  him  more  than  in  any  English 
writer  the  sturdy  sense  and  shrewdness  of  our  national  disposi- 
tion, corrects  its  extravagance,  and  relieves  its  somewhat  pon- 
derous morality.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  echoes  the  joyous 
carelessness  of  the  Italian  tale,  he  tempers  it  with  the  Eng- 
lish seriousness.  As  he  follows  Boccaccio,  all  his  changes 
are  on  the  side  of  purity  ;  and  when  the  Troilus  of  the  Flor- 


280  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

entine  ends  with  the  old  sneer  at  the  changeableness  of 
woman,  Chaucer  bids  us  "look  Godward,"  and  dwells  on  the 
unchangeableness  of  Heaven. 

But -the  genius  of  Chaucer  was  neither  French  nor  Italian, 
whatever  element  it  might  borrow  from  either  literature, 
but  English  to  the  core,  and  from  1384  all  trace  of 
foreign  influence  dies  away.  The  great  poem  on 
which  his  fame  must  rest,  the  "  Canterbury 
Tales,"  was  begun  after  his  first  visits  to  Italy,  and  its  best 
tales  were  written  between  1384  and  1391.  The  last  ten 
years  of  his  life  saw  a  few  more  tales  added  ;  but  his  power 
was  lessening,  and  in  1400  he  rested  from  his  labors  in  his 
last  home,  a  house  in  the  garden  of  St.  Mary's  Chapel  at 
Westminster.  The  framework — that  of  a  pilgrimage  from 
London  to  Canterbury — not  only  enabled  him  to  string  to- 
gether a  number  of  tales,  composed  at  different  times,  but 
lent  itself  admirably  to  the  peculiar  characteristics  of  his 
poetic  temper,  his  dramatic  versatility,  and  the  universality 
of  his  sympathy.  His  tales  cover  the  whole  field  of  medieval 
poetry  ;  the  legend  of  the  priest,  the  knightly  romance,  the 
wonder-tale  of  the  traveler,  the  broad  humor  of  the  fabliau, 
allegory  and  apologue  are  all  there.  He  finds  a  yet  wider 
scope  for  his  genius  in  the  persons  who  tell  these  stories, 
the  thirty  pilgrims  who  start  in  the  May  morning  from  the 
Tabard  in  Southwark — thirty  distinct  figures,  representatives 
of  every  class  of  English  society  from  the  noble  to  the  plow- 
man. We  see  the  "  verray  perfight  gentil  knight"  in  cas- 
sock and  coat  of  mail,  with  his  curly-headed  squire  beside  him, 
fresh  as  the  May  morning,  and  behind  them  the  brown-faced 
yeoman,  in  his  coat  and  hood  of  green,  with  the  good  bow  in 
his  hand.  A  group  of  ecclesiastics  light  up  for  us  the  me- 
dieval church — the  brawny  hunt-loving  monk,  whose  bridle 
jingles  as  loud  and  clear  as  the  chapel-bell — the  wanton  friar, 
first  among  the  beggars  and  harpers  of  the  countryside — the 
poor  parson,  threadbare,  learned,  and  devout  ("  Christ's 
lore  and  His  apostles  twelve  he  taught,  and  first  he  followed 
it  himself") — the  summoner  with  his  fiery  face — the  pardoner 
with  his  wallet  "bret-full  of  pardons,  come  from  Borne  all 
hot " — the  lively  prioress  with  her  courtly  French  lisp,  her 
-soft  little  red  mouth,  and  "  Amor  vincit  omuia"  graven  on 
her  brooch.  Learning  is  there  in  the  portly  person  of  the 


EDWARD   THE  THIRD.      1336   TO    1360. 

doctor  of  physic,  rich  with  the  profits  of  the  pestilence — the 
busy  sergeant-of-law,  "  that  ever  seemed  busier  than  he 
was  " — the  hollow-cheeked  clerk  of  Oxford,  with  his  love  of 
books,  and  short  sharp  sentences  that  disguise  a  latent  ten- 
derness which  breaks  out  at  last  in  the  story  of  Griseldis. 
Around  them  crowd  types  of  English  industry ;  the  mer- 
chant ;  the  franklin,  in  whose  house  "  it  snowed  of  meat 
and  drink  ; "  the  sailor  fresh  from  frays  in  the  Channel ;  the 
buxom  wife  of  Bath  ;  the  broad-shouldered  miller ;  the  hab- 
erdasher, carpenter,  weaver,  dyer,  tapestry-maker,  each  in 
the  livery  of  his  craft ;  and  last,  the  honest  plowman,  who 
would  dyke  and  delve  for  the  poor  without  hire.  It  is  the 
first  time  in  English  poetry  that  we  are  brought  face  to  face 
not  with  characters  or  allegories  or  reminiscences  of  the  past, 
but  with  living  and  breathing  men,  men  distinct  in  tem- 
per and  sentiment  as  in  face  or  costume  or  mode  of  speech  ; 
and  with  this  distinctness  of  each  maintained  throughout  the 
story  by  a  thousand  shades  of  expression  and  action.  It  is 
the  first  time  too,  that  we  meet  with  the  dramatic  power  which 
not  only  creates  each  character,  but  combines  it  with  its  fel- 
lows, which  not  only  adjusts  each  tale  or  jest  to  the  temper 
of  the  person  who  utters  it,  but  fuses  all  into  a  poetic  unity. 
It  is  life  in  its  largeness,  its  variety,  its  complexity,  which 
surrounds  us  in  the  "  Canterbury  Tales/'  In  some  of  the 
stories,  indeed,  composed  no  doubt  at  an  earlier  time,  there 
is  the  tedium  of  the  old  romance  or  the  pedantry  of  the 
schoolman  ;  but  taken  as  a  whole  the  poem  is  the  work  not 
of  a  man  of  letters,  but  of  a  man  of  action.  Chaucer  has 
received  his  training  from  war,  courts,  business,  travel — a 
training  not.  of  books,  but  of  life.  And  it  is  life  that  he 
loves — the  delicacy  of  its  sentiment,  the  breadth  of  its  farce, 
its  laughter  and  its  tears,  the  tenderness  of  its  Griseldis  or  the 
Smollett-like  adventures  of  the  miller  and  the  clerks.  It  is 
this  largeness  of  heart,  this  wide  tolerance,  which  enables 
him  to  reflect  man  for  us  as  none  but  Shakspere  has  ever  re- 
flected him,  and  to  do  this  with  a  pathos,  a  shrewd  sense  and 
kindly  humor,  a  freshness  and  joyousness  of  feeling,  that 
even  Shakspere  has  not  surpassed. 

It  is  strange  that  such  a  voice  as  this  should  have  awakened 
no  echo  in  the  singers  who  follow ;  but  the  first  burst  of 
English  song  died  as  suddenly  and  utterly  with  Chaucer  as 


282  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  hope  and  glory  of  his  age.  The  hundred  years  which 
follow  the  brief  sunshine  of  Crecy  and  the  "  Canterbury 
Tales  "  are  years  of  the  deepest  gloom  ;  no  age  of  our  history 
is  more  sad  and  somber  than  the  age  which  we  traverse  from 
the  third  Edward  to  Joan  of  Arc.  The  throb  of  hope  and 
glory  which  pulsed  at  its  outset  through  every  class  of  Eng- 
lish society  died  at  its  close  into  inaction  or  despair. 
Material  life  lingered  on  indeed,  commerce  still  widened,  but 
its  progress  was  dissociated  from  all  the  nobler  elements  of 
national  well-being.  The  towns  sank  again  into  close  oli- 
garchies ;  the  bondsmen  struggling  forward  to  freedom  fell 
back  into  a  serfage  which  still  leaves  its  trace  on  the  soil. 
Literature  reached  its  lowest  ebb.  The  religious  revival  of 
the  Lollard  was  trodden  out  in  blood,  while  the  Church 
shriveled  into  a  self-seeking  secular  priesthood.  In  the 
clash  of  civil  strife  political  freedom  was  all  but  extinguished, 
and  the  age  which  began  with  the  Good  Parliament  ended 
with  the  despotism  of  the  Tudors. 

The  secret  of  the  change  is  to  be  found  in  the  fatal  war 
which     for     more    than    a    hundred    years    drained     the 

England     strength  and  corrupted  the  temper  of  the  Eng- 
and        lish  people.     We  have  followed   the   attack  on 

France-  Scotland  to  its  disastrous  close,  but  the  struggle, 
ere  it  ended,  had  involved  England  in  a  second  contest, 
to  which  we  must  now  turn  back,  a  contest  yet  more 
ruinous  than  that  which  Edward  the  First  had  begun. 
From  the  war  with  Scotland  sprang  the  hundred  years' 
struggle  with  France.  From  the  first  France  had  watched 
the  successes  of  her  rival  in  the  north,  partly  with  a  natural 
jealousy,  but  still  more  as  likely  to  afford  her  an  opening 
for  winning  the  great  southern  Duchy  of  Guienne  and 
Gascony — the  one  fragment  of  Eleanor's  inheritance  which 
remained  to  her  descendants.  Scotland  had  no  sooner  begun 
to  resent  the  claims  of  her  overlord,  Edward  the  First,  than 
a  pretext  for  open  quarrel  was  found  by  France  in  the 
rivalry  between  the  mariners  of  Normandy  and  those  of  the 
Cinque  Ports,  which  culminated  at  the  moment  in  a  great 
sea-fight  that  proved  fatal  to  8,000  Frenchmen.  So  eager 
was  Edward  to  avert  a  quarrel  with  France,  that  his  threats 
roused  the  English  seamen  to  a  characteristic  defiance.  ' '  Be 
the  King's  Council  well  advised,"  ran  the  remonstrance  of 


EDWARD   THE   THIRD.      1336   TO    1360.  283 

the  mariners,  "that  if  wrong  or  grievance  be  done  them  in 
any  fashion  against  right,  they  will  sooner  forsake  wives, 
children,  and  all  that  they  have,  and  go  seek  through  the 
seas  where  they  shall  think  to  make  their  profits."  In  spite, 
therefore,  of  Edward's  efforts  the  contest  continued,  and 
Philip  found  an  opportunity  to  cite  the  king  before  his 
court  at  Paris  for  wrongs  done  to  him  as  suzerain.  Again 
Edward  endeavored  to  avert  the  conflict  by  a  formal  cession 
of  Guienne  into  Philip's  hands  during  forty  days,  but  the 
refusal  of  the  French  sovereign  to  restore  the  province  left 
no  choice  for  him  but  war.  The  refusal  of  the  Scotch 
barons  to  answer  his  .summons  to  arms,  and  the  revolt  of 
Balliol,  proved  that  the  French  outrage  was  but  the  first 
blow  in  a  deliberate  and  long-planned  scheme  of  attack  ; 
Edward  had  for  a  while  no  force  to  waste  on  France,  and 
when  the  first  conquest  of  Scotland  freed  his  hands,  his 
league  with  Flanders  for  the  recovery  of  Guienne  was  foiled 
by  the  strife  with  his  baronage.  A  truce  with  Philip  set 
him  free  to  meet  new  troubles  in  the  north  ;  but  even  after 
the  victory  of  Falkirk  Scotch  independence  was  still  saved 
for  six  years  by  the  threats  of  France  and  the  intervention 
of  its  ally,  Boniface  the  Eighth  ;  and  it  was  only  the  quarrel 
of  these  two  confederates  which  allowed  Edward  to  complete 
its  subjection.  But  the  rising  under  Bruce  was  again 
backed  by  French  aid  and  by  the  renewal  of  the  old. 
quarrel  over  Guienne — a  quarrel  which  hampered  England 
through  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Second,  and  which  in- 
directly brought  about  his  terrible  fall.  The  accession  of 
Edward  the  Third  secured  a  momentary  peace,  but  the 
fresh  attack  on  Scotland  which  marked  the  opening  of  his 
reign  kindled  hostility  anew  ;  the  young  King  David  found 
refuge  in  France,  and  arms,  money,  and  men  were  des- 
patched from  its  ports  to  support  his  cause.  It  was  this  in- 
tervention of  France  which  foiled  Edward's  hopes  of  the 
submission  of  Scotland  at  the  very  moment  when  success 
seemed  in  his  grasp ;  the  solemn  announcement  by  Philip 
of  Valois  that  his  treaties  bound  him  to  give  effective  help 
to  his  old  ally,  and  the  assembly  of  a  French  fleet  in  the 
Channel  drew  the  king  from  his  struggle  in  the  north 
to  face  a  storm  which  his  negotiations  could  no  longer 
avert. 


284  HISTORY    OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

From  the  first  the  war  took  European  dimensions.     The 

weakness   of  the   Empire,  the   captivity   of  the  Papacy  at 

The  Open-   Avignon,    left    France    without   a  rival    among 

ing  of  the  European  powers.  In  numbers,  in  wealth,  the 
War.  French  people  far  surpassed  their  neighbors  over 
the  Channel.  England  can  hardly  have  counted  four  mil- 
lions of  inhabitants,  France  boasted  of  twenty.  Edward 
could  only  bring  eight  thousand  men-at-arms  into  the  field. 
Philip,  while  a  third  of  his  force  was  busy  elsewhere,  could 
appear  at  the  head  of  forty  thousand.  Edward's  whole 
energy  was  bent  on  meeting  the  strength  of  France  by  a 
coalition  of  powers  against  her  ;  and  his  plans  were  helped 
by  the  dread  which  the  great  feudatories  of  the  Empire  who 
lay  nearest  to  him  felt  of  French  annexation,  as  well  as  by 
the  quarrel  of  the  Empire  with  the  Papacy.  Anticipating 
the  later  policy  of  Godolphin  and  Pitt,  Edward  became  the 
paymaster  of  the  poorer  princes  of  Germany ;  his  subsidies 
purchased  the  aid  of  Hainault,  Gelders,  and  Julich  ;  sixty 
thousand  crowns  went  to  the  Duke  of  Brabant,  while  the 
Emperor  himself  was  induced  by  a  promise  of  three  thousand 
gold  florins  to  furnish  two  thousand  men-at-arms.  Negoti- 
ations and  profuse  expenditure,  however,  brought  the  king 
little  fruit  save  the  title  of  Vicar-General  of  the  Empire  on 
the  left  of  the  Rhine  ;  now  the  Emperor  hung  back,  now  the 
allies  refused  to  move  ;  and  when  the  host  at  last  crossed  the 
border,  Edward  found  it  impossible  to  bring  the  French 
king  to  an  engagement.  But  as  hope  from  the  Imperial 
alliance  faded  away,  a  fresh  hope  dawned  on  the  king  from 
another  quarter.  Flanders  was  his  natural  ally.  England 
was  the  great  wool-producing  country  of  the  west,  but  few 
woolen  fabrics  were  woven  in  England.  The  number  of 
weavers'  gilds  shows  that  the  trade  was  gradually  extend- 
ing, and  at  the  very  outset  of  his  reign  Edward  had  taken 
steps  for  its  encouragement.  He  invited  Flemish  weavers 
to  settle  in  his  country,  and  took  the  new  immigrants,  who 
chose  the  eastern  counties  for  the  seat  of  their  trade,  under 
his  royal  protection.  But  English  manufactures  were  still 
in  their  infancy,  and  nine-tenths  of  the  English  wool  went 
to  the  looms  of  Bruges  or  of  Ghent.  We  may  see  the  rapid 
growth  of  this  export  trade  in  the  fact  that  the  king 
received  in  a  single  year  more  than  £30,000  from  duties 


EDWARD   THE  THIRD.      1336   TO   1360.  286 

levied  on  wool  alone.  A  stoppage  of  this  export  would  throw 
half  the  population  of  the  great  Flemish  towns  out  of  work  ; 
and  Flanders  was  drawn  to  the  English  alliance,  not  only  by 
the  interest  of  trade,  but  by  the  democratic  spirit  of  the 
towns,  which  jostled  roughly  with  the  feudalism  of  France. 
A  treaty  was  concluded  with  the  Duke  of  Brabant  and  the 
Flemish  towns,  and  preparations  were  made  for  a  new  cam- 
paign. Philip  gathered  a  fleet  of  two  hundred  vessels  at 
Sluys  to  prevent  his  crossing  the  Channel,  but  Edward  with 
a  far  smaller  force  utterly  destroyed  the  French  ships,  and 
marched  to  invest  Tournay.  Its  siege  however  proved  fruit- 
less ;  his  vast  army  broke  up,  and  want  of  money  forced  him 
to  a  truce  for  a  year.  A  quarrel  of  succession  to  the  Duchy 
of  Brittany,  which  broke  out  in  1341,  and  in  which  of  the 
two  rival  claimants  one  was  supported  by  Philip  and  the 
other  by  Edward,  dragged  on  year  after  year.  In  Flanders 
things  went  ill  for  the  English  cause,  and  the  death  of 
the  great  statesman  Van  Arteveldt  in  1345  proved  a 
heavy  blow  to  Edward's  projects.  The  king's  difficulties 
indeed  had  at  last  reached  their  height.  His  loans  from  the 
great  bankers  of  Florence  amounted  to  half  a  million  of  our 
money  ;  his  overtures  for  peace  were  contemptuously  re- 
jected ;  the  claim  which  he  advanced  to  the  French  crown 
found  not  a  single  adherent  save  among  the  burghers  of 
Ghent.  To  establish  such  a  claim,  indeed,  was  difficult 
enough.  The  three  sons  of  Philip  the  Fair  had  died  with- 
out male  issue,  and  Edward  claimed  as  the  son  of  Philip's 
daughter  Isabella.  But  though  her  brothers  had  left  no 
sons,  they  had  left  daughters ;.  and  if  female  succession  were 
admitted,  these  daughters  of  Philip's  sons  would  precede  a 
son  of  Philip's  daughter.  Isabella  met  this  difficulty  by 
contending  that  though  females  could  transmit  the  right  of 
succession  they  could  not  themselves  possess  it,  and  that  her 
son,  as  the  nearest  living  male  descendant  of  Philip,  and 
born  in  his  lifetime,  could  claim  in  preference  to  females 
who  were  related  to  Philip  in  as  near  a  dt-gree.  But  the 
bulk  of  French  jurists  asserted  that  only  male  succession 
gave  right  to  the  throne.  On  such  a  theory  the  right  inher- 
itable from  Philip  was  exhausted  ;  and  the  crown  passed  to 
the  son  of  his  brother  Charles  of  Valois,  who  in  fact  peace- 
fully mounted  the  throne  as  Philip  the  Fifth.  Edward's 


286  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

claim  seems  to  have  been  regarded  on  both  sides  as  a  mere 
formality ;  the  king,  in  fact,  did  full  and  liege  homage  to 
his  rival  for  his  Duchy  of  Guienne  ;  and  it  was  not  till  his 
hopes  from  Germany  had  been  exhausted,  and  his  claim  was 
found  to  be  useful  in  securing  the  loyal  aid  of  the  Flemish 
towns,  that  it  was  brought  seriously  to  the  front. 

The  failure  of  his  foreign  hopes  threw  Edward  on  the 
resources  of  England  itself,  and  it  was  with  an  army  of  thirty 

thousand  men  that  he  landed  at  La  Hogue,  and 
Crecy.      commenced  a  march  which  was  to  change  the 

whole  face  of  the  war.  The  French  forces  were 
engaged  in  holding  in  check  an  English  army  which  had 
landed  in  Guienne ;  and  panic  seized  the  French  king  as 
Edward  now  marched  through  Normandy,  and  finding  the 
bridges  on  the  lower  Seine  broken,  pushed  straight  on  Paris, 
rebuilt  the  bridge  of  Poissy  and  threatened  the  capital.  At 
this  crisis,  however,  France  found  an  unexpected  help  in  a 
body  of  German  knights.  The  Pope,  having  deposed  the 
Emperor  Lewis  of  Bavaria,  had  crowned  as  his  successor  a 
son  of  King  John  of  Bohemia,  the  well-known  Charles  IV.  of 
the  Golden  Bull.  But/  against  this  Papal  assumption  of  a 
right  to  bestow  the  German  crown,  Germany  rose  as  one  man, 
and  Charles,  driven  to  seek  help  from  Philip,  now  found 
himself  in  France  with  his  father  and  a  troop  of  five  hundred 
knights.  Hurrying  to  Paris  this  German  force  formed  the 
nucleus  of  an  army  which  assembled  at  St.  Denys  ;  and 
which  was  soon  reinforced  by  15,000  Genoese  cross-bowmen 
who  had  been  hired  from  among  the  soldiers  of  the  Lord  of 
Monaco  on  the  sunny  Riviera  and  arrived  at  this  hour  of 
need.  The  French  troops  too  were  called  from  Guienne  to 
the  rescue.  With  this  host  rapidly  gathering  in  his  front 
Edward  abandoned  his  march  on  Paris,  and  threw  himself 
across  the  Seine  to  join  a  Flemish  force  gathered  at  Grave- 
lines,  and  open  a  campaign  in  the  north.  But  the  rivers  in  his 
path  were  carefully  guarded,  and  it  was  only  by  surprising  the 
ford  of  Blanche-Taque  on  the  Somme,  that  Edward  escaped  the 
necessity  of  surrendering  to  the  vast  host  which  was  now 
hastening  in  pursuit.  His  communications,  however,  were 
no  sooner  secured  than  he  halted  at  the  village  of  Cr6cy,  in 
Ponthieu,  and  resolved  to  give  battle.  Half  of  his  army> 
now  greatly  reduced  in  strength  by  his  rapid  marches,  con- 


EDWARD    THE   THIRD.      1336    TO   1360.  287 

sisted  of  the  light-armed  footmen  of  Ireland  and  Wales  ;  the 
bulk  of  the  remainder  was  composed  of  English  bowmen.  The 
l<ing  ordered  his  men-at-arms  to  dismount,  and  drew  up  his 
forces  on  a  low  rise  sloping  gently  to  the  southeast,  with 
a  windmill  on  its  summit  from  which  he  could  overlook  the 
whole  field  of  battle.  Immediately  beneath  him  lay  his  re- 
serve, while  at  the  base  of  the  slope  was  placed  the  main  body 
of  the  army  in  two  divisions,  that  to  the  right  commanded  by 
the  young  Prince  of  Wales,  Edward  the  Black  Prince  as  he 
was  called,  that  to  the  left  by  the  Earl  of  Northampton.  A 
small  ditch  protected  the  English  front,  and  behind  it  the 
bowmen  were  drawn  up  "  in  the  form  of  a  harrow/' with 
small  bombards  between  them  "  which,  with  fire,  threw  little 
iron  balls  to  frighten  the  horses" — the  first  instance  of  the 
use  of  artillery  in  field  warfare.  The  halt  of  the  English 
army  took  Philip  by  surprise,  and  he  attempted  for  a  time 
to, check  the  advance  of  his  army,  but  the  disorderly  host 
rolled  on  to  the  English  front.  The  sight  of  his  enemies, 
indeed,  stirred  the  king's  own  blood  to  fury,  "for  he  hated 
them,"  and  at  vespers  the  fight  began.  The  Genoese  cross- 
bowmen  were  ordered  to  begin  the  attack,  but  the  men  were 
weary  with  the  march  ;  a  sudden  storm  wetted  and  rendered 
useless  their  bowstrings  ;  and  the  loud  shouts  with  which 
they  leapt  forward  to  the  encounter  were  met  with  dogged 
silence  in  the  English  ranks.  Their  first  arrow-flight,  how- 
ever, brought  a  terrible  reply.  So  rapid  was  the  English 
shot,  "that  it  seemed  as  if  it  snowed."  "Kill  me  these 
scoundrels,"  shouted  Philip,  as  the  Genoese  fell  back  ;  and 
his  men-at-arms  plunged  butchering  into  their  broken  ranks, 
while  the  Counts  of  Alenqonand  Flanders,  at  the  head  of  the 
French  knighthood;  fell  hotly  on  the  Prince's  line.  For 
the  instant  his  small  force  seemed  lost,  but  Edward  refused 
to  send  him  aid.  "  Is  he  dead  or  unhorsed,  or  so  wounded 
that  he  cannot  help  himself  ?"  he  asked  the  envoy.  "No, 
sir,"  was  the  reply,  "but  he  is  in  a  hard  passage  of  arms,  and 
sorely  needs  your  help."  "  Return  to  those  that  sent  you,  Sir 
Thomas,"  said  the  king,  "  and  bid  them  not  send  to  me 
again  so  long  as  my  son  lives  !  Let  the  boy  win  his  spurs  ; 
for  if  God  so  order  it,  I  will  that  the  day  may  be  his,  and  that 
the  honor  may  be  with  him  and  them  to  whom  I  have  given 
it  in  charge."  Edward  could  see,  in  fact,  from  his 


288  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ground,  that  all  went  well.  The  English  bowmen  and  men-at- 
arms  held  their  ground  stoutly,  while  the  Welshmen  stabbed 
the  French  horses  in  the  melee,  and  brought  knight  after 
knight  to  the  ground.  Soon  the  French  host  was  wavering  in 
a  fatal  confusion.  "You  are  my  vassals,  my  friends/' cried 
the  blind  King  John  of  Bohemia,  who  had  joined  Philip's 
army,  to  the  German  nobles  around  him  :  "  I  pray  and 
beseech  you  to  lead  me  so  far  into  the  fight  that  I  may  strike 
one  good  blow  with  this  sword  of  mine!"  Linking  their 
bridles  together,  the  little  company  plunged  into  the  thick 
of  the  combat  to  fall  as  their  fellows  were  falling.  The 
battle  went  steadily  against  the  French  :  at  last  Philip  him- 
self hurried  from  the  field,  and  the  defeat  became  a  rout : 
1,200  knights  and  30,000  footmen — a  number  equal  to  the 
whole  English  force — lay  dead  upon  the  ground. 

"  God  has  punished  us  for  our  sins,"  cried  the  chronicler 
of  St.  Denys,  in  a  passion  of  bewildered  grief,  as  he  tells  the 

rout  of  the  great  host  which  he  had  seen  mustering 
Calais.      beneath  his  abbey  walls.     But  the  fall  of  France 

was  hardly  so  sudden  or  so  incomprehensible  as  the 
ruin  at  a  single  blow  of  a  system  of  warfare,  and  of  the  po- 
litical and  social  fabric  which  rested  on  it.  Feudalism  de- 
pended on  the  superiority  of  the  mounted  noble  to  the  un- 
mounted churl  ;  its  fighting  power  lay  in  its  knighthood. 
But  the  English  yeomen  and  small  freeholders  who  bore  the 
bow  in  the  national  fyrd  had  raised  their  weapon  into  a  ter- 
rible engine  of  war  ;  in  the  English  archers  Edward  carried  a 
new  class  of  soldiers  to  the  fields  of  France.  The  churl  had 
struck  down  the  noble  ;  the  yeoman  proved  more  than  a 
match  in  sheer  hard  fighting  for  the  knight.  From  the  day 
of  Crecy  feudalism  tottered  slowly  but  surely  to  its  grave. 
To  England  the  day  was  the  beginning  of  a  career  of  military 
glory,  which,  fatal  as  it  was,  destined  to  prove  to  the  higher 
sentiments  and  interests  of  the  nation,  gave  it  for  the  moment 
an  energy  such  as  it  had  never  known  before.  Victory  fol- 
lowed victory.  A  few  months  after  Crecy  a  Scotch  army 
which  had  burst  into  the  north  was  routed  at  Neville's  Cross, 
and  its  king,  David  Bruce,  taken  prisoner  ;  while  the  with- 
drawal of  the  French  from  the  Garonne  enabled  the  English 
to  recover  Poitou.  Edward  meanwhile  turned  to  strike  at 
the  naval  superiority  of  France  by  securing  the  mastery  of 


EDWARD   THE   THIRD.      1336   TO   1360.  289 

the  Channel.  Calais  was  a  great  pirate-haven  ;  in  one  year 
alone,  twenty-two  privateers  had  sailed  from  its  port,  while 
its  capture  promised  the  king  an  easy  base  of  communication 
with  Flanders,  and  of  operations  against  France.  The  siege 
lasted  a  year,  and  it  was  not  till  Philip  had  failed  to  relieve 
it  that  the  town  was-  starved  into  surrender.  Mercy  was 
granted  to  the  garrison  and  the  people  on  condition  that  six 
of  the  citizens  gave  themselves  unconditionally  into  the  king's 
hands.  "  On  them,"  said  Edward,  with  a  burst  of  bitter 
hatred,  "  I  will  do  my  will."  At  the  sound  of  the  town  bell, 
Jehan  le  Bel  tells  us,  the  folk  of  Calais  gathered  round  the 
bearer  of  these  terms,  "  desiring  to  hear  their  good  news,  for 
they  were  all  mad  with  hunger.  When  the  said  knight  told 
them  his  news,  then  began  they  to  weep  and  cry  so  loudly 
that  it  was  great  pity.  Then  stood  up  the  wealthiest  burgess 
of  the  town,  Master  Eustache  de  S.  Pierre  by  name,  and  spake 
thus  before,  all  :  '  My  masters,  great  grief  and  mishap  it 
were  for  all  to  leave  such  a  people  as  this  is  to  die  by  famine 
or  otherwise  ;  and  great  charity  and  grace  would  he  win  from 
our  Lord  who  could  defend  them  from  dying.  For  me  I  have 
great  hope  in  the  Lord  that  if  I  can  save  this  people  by  my 
death,  I  shall  have  pardon  for  my  faults,  wherefore  will  I  be 
the  first  of  the  six,  and  of  my  own  will  put  myself  barefoot 
in  my  shirt  and  with  a  halter  round  my  neck  in  the  mercy  of 
King  Edward.' '  The  list  of  devoted  men  was  soon  made  up, 
and  the  six  victims  were  led  before  the  king.  "  All  the  host 
assembled  together  ;  there  was  great  press,  and  many  bade 
hang  them  openly,  and  many  wept  for  pity.  The  noble  king 
came  with  his  train  of  counts  and  barons  to  the  place,  and  the 
queen  followed  him,  though  great  with  child,  to  see  what  there 
would  be.  The  six  citizens  knelt  down  at  once  before  the 
king,  and  Master  Eustache  said  thus  :  '  Gentle  king,  here  be 
we  six  who  have  been  of  the  old  bourgeoisie  of  Calais  and 
great  merchants ;  we  bring  'you  the  keys  of  the  town  and 
castle  of  Calais,  and  render  them  to  you  at  your  pleasure. 
"We  set  ourselves  in  such  wise  as  you  see  purely  at  your  will 
to  save  the  remnant  of  the  people  that  has  suffered  much 
pain.  So  may  you  have  pity  and  mercy  on  us  for  your  high 
nobleness'  sake."  Certes,  there  was  then  in  that  place 
neither  lord  nor  knight  that  wept  not  for- pity  ;  nor  who  could 
speak  for  pity,  but  the  king  had  his  heart  so  hardened 
'9 


290  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

by  wrath,  that  for  a  long  while  he  could  not  reply;  then 
he  commanded  to  cut  off  their  heads.  All  the  knights 
and  lords  prayed  him  with  tears,  as  much  as  they  could, 
to  have  pity  on  them,  but  he  would  not  hear.  Then 
spoke  the  gentle  knight,  Master  Walter  de  Maunay, 
and  said,  'Ha,  gentle  sire  !  bridle  your  .wrath  ;  you  have  the 
renown  and  good  fame  of  all  gentleness  ;  do  not  a  thing 
whereby  men  can  speak  any  villainy  of  you  !  If  you  have  no 
pity,  all  men  will  say  that  you  have  a  heart  full  of  all  cruelty 
to  put  these  good  citizens  to  death  that  of  their  own 
will  are  come  to  render  themselves  to  you  to  save  the  remnant 
of  their  people/'  At  this  point  the  king  changed  coun- 
tenance with  wrath,  and  said,  '  Hold  your  peace,  Master  Wal- 
ter !  it  shall  be  none  otherwise.  Call  the  headsman  !  They 
of  Calais  have  made  so  many  of  my  men  die,  that  they  must 
die  themselves  ! '  Then  did  the  noble  Queen  of  England  a 
deed  of  noble  lowliness,  seeing  she  was  great  with  child,  and 
wept  so  tenderly  for  pity,  that  she  could  no  longer  stand  up- 
right ;  therefore  she  cast  herself  on  her  knees  before  her  lord, 
the  king,  and  spake  on  this  wise :  '  Ah,  gentle  sire  !  from 
the  day  that  I  passed  over  sea  in  great  peril,  as  you 
know,  I  have  asked  for  nothing :  now  pray  I  and  beseech 
you,  with  folded  hands,  for  the  love  of  our  Lady's  Son,  to 
have  mercy  upon  them/'  The  gentle  king  waited  for  a  while 
before  speaking,  and  looked  on  the  queen  as  she  knelt  before 
him  bitterly  weeping.  Then  began  his  heart  to  soften  a 
little,  and  he  said  "  Lady,  I  would  rather  you  had  been 
otherwhere  ;  you  pray  so  tenderly  that  I  dare  not  refuse  you  ; 
and  though  I  do  it  against  my  will,  nevertheless  take  them,  I 
give  them  to  you."  Then  took  he  the  six  citizens  by  the 
halters  and  delivered  them  to  the  queen,  and  released  from 
death  all  those  from  Calais  for  the  love  of  her  ;  and  the 
good  lady  bade  them  clothe  the  six  burgesses  and  make  them 
good  cheer." 

Edward  now  stood  at  the  height  of  his  renown.     He  had 
won  the  greatest  victory  of  his  age.     France,  till  now  the 

first  of  European  states,  was  broken  and  dashed 
Poitiers,     from  her  pride  of  place  at  a  single  blow.    A  naval 

picture  of  Froissart  sketches  Edward  for  us  as  he 
sailed  to  meet  a  Spanish  fleet  which  was  sweeping  the  narrow 
seas.  We  see  the  king  sitting  on  deck  in  his  jacket  of  black 


EDWAKD   THE   THllti>.       l&*t>    TO    13t)U.  291 

velvet,  his  head  covered  by  a  black  beaver  hat  "  which  be- 
came him  well,"  and  calling  on  Sir  John  Chaudos  to  troll 
out  the  songs  he  had  brought  with  him  from  Germany,  till 
the  Spanisli  ships  heave  in  sight  and  a  furious  fight  begins 
which  ends  in  a  victory  that  leaves  Edward  "King  of  the 
Seas."  But  peace  with  France  was  as  far  off  as  ever.  Even 
the  truce  which  for  seven  years  was  forced  on  both  countries 
by  sheer  exhaustion  became  at  last  impossible.  Edward  pre- 
pared three  armies  to  act  at  once  in  Normandy,  Brittany,  and 
Guienne,  but  the  plan  of  the  campaign  broke  down.  The 
Black  Prince,  as  the  hero  of  Crecy  was  called,  alone  won  a 
disgraceful  success.  Unable  to  pay  his  troops,  he  staved  off 
their  demands  by  a  campaign  of  sheer  pillage.  Northern 
and  central  France  had  by  this  time  fallen  into  utter  ruin  ; 
the  royal  treasury  was  empty,  the  fortresses  unoccupied,  the 
troops  disbanded  for  want  of  pay,  the  country  swept  by 
bandits.  Only  the  south  remained  at  peace,  and  the  young 
Prince  led  his  army  of  freebooters  up  the  Garonne  into 
"  what  was  before  one  of  the  fat  countries  of  the  world,  the 
people  good  and  simple,  who  did  not  know  what  war  was  ; 
indeed,  no  war  had  been  waged  against  them  till  the  Prince 
came.  The  English  and  Gascons  found  the  country  full 
and  gay,  the  rooms  adorned  with  carpets  and  draperies,  the 
caskets  and  chests  full  of  fair  jewels.  But  nothing  was  safe 
from  these  robbers.  They,  and  especially  the  Gascons,  who 
are  very  greedy,  carried  off  everything."  The  capture  of 
Narbonne  loaded  them  with  booty,  and  they  fell  back  to 
Bordeaux,  "their  horses  so  laden  with  spoil  that  they  could 
hardly  move."  The  next  year  a  march  of  the  Prince's  army 
on  the  Loire  pointed  straight  upon  Paris,  and  a  French 
army  under  John,  who  had  succeeded  Philip  of  Valois  on 
the  throne,  hurried  to  check  his  advance.  The  Prince  gave 
orders  for  a  retreat,  but  as  he  approached  Poitiers  he  found 
the  French,  who  now  numbered  60,000  men,  in  his  path. 
He  at  once  took  a  strong  position  in  the  fields  of  Maupertuis, 
his  front  covered  by  thick  hedges,  and  approachable  only  by 
a  deep  and  narrow  lane  which  ran  between  vineyards.  The 
Prince  lined  the  vineyards  and  hedges  with  bowmen,  and 
drew  up  his  small  body  of  men-at-arms  at  the  point  where 
the  lane  opened  upon  the  higher  plain  where  he  was  en- 
camped. His  force  numbered  only  8,000  men,  and  the  danger 


292  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

was  great  enough  to  force  him  to  offer  the  surrender  of  his 
prisoners  and  of  the  places  he  had  taken,  and  an  oath  not  to 
fight  against  France  for  seven  years,  in  exchange  for  a  free 
retreat.  The  terms  were  rejected,  and  three  hundred 
French  knights  charged  up  the  narrow  lane.  It  was  soon 
choked  with  men  and  horses,  while  the  front  ranks  of  the 
advancing  army  fell  back  before  a  galling  fire  of  arrows  from 
the  hedgerows.  In  the  moment  of  confusion  a  body  of 
English  horsemen,  posted  on  a  hill  to  the  right,  charged 
suddenly  on  the  French  flank,  and  the  Prince  seized  the  op- 
portunity to  fall  boldly  on  their  front.  The  English  archery 
completed  the  disorder  produced  by  this  sudden  attack  ;  the 
French  king  was  taken,  desperately  fighting  ;  and  at  noon- 
tide, when  his  army  poured  back  in  utter  rout  to  the  gates 
of  Poitiers,  8,000  of  their  number  had  fallen  on  the  field, 
3,000  in  the  flight,  and  2,000  men-at-arms,  with  a  crowd  of 
nobles,  were  taken  prisoners.  The  royal  captive  entered 
London  in  triumph,  and  a  truce  for  two  years  seemed  to 
give  healing-time  to  France.  But  the  miserable  country 
found  no  rest  in  itself.  The  routed  soldiery  turned  into  free 
companies  of  bandits,  while  the  captive  lords  procured  the 
sums  needed  for  their  ransom  by  extortion  from  the  peas- 
antry, who  were  driven  by  oppression  and  famine  into  wild 
insurrection,  butchering  their  lords,  and  firing  the  castles  ; 
while  Paris,  impatient  of  the  weakness  and  misrule  of  the 
Regency,  rose  in  arms  against  the  Crown.  The  "Jacquerie,"' 
as  the  peasant  rising  was  called,  had  hardly  been  crushed, 
when  Edward  again  poured  ravaging  over  the  wasted  land. 
Famine,  however,  proved  its  best  defense.  "  I  could  not 
believe/'  said  Petrarch  of  this  time,  "  that  this  was  the  same 
France  which  I  had  seen  so  rich  and  flourishing.  Nothing 
presented  itself  to  my  eyes  but  a  fearful  solitude,  an  utter 
poverty,  land  uncultivated,  houses  in  ruins.  Even  the 
neighborhood  of  Paris  showed  everywhere  marks  of  desola- 
tion and  conflagration.  The  streets  are  deserted,  the  roads 
overgrown  with  weeds,  the  whole  is  a  vast  solitude."  The 
misery  of  the  land  at  last  bent  Charles  to  submission,  and  in 
May  a  treaty  was  concluded  at  Bretigny,  a  small  place  to  the 
eastward  of  Chartres.  By  this  treaty  the  English  king 
waived  his  claims  on  the  crown  of  France  and  on  the  Duchy 
of  Normandy.  On  the  other  hand,  his  Duchy  of  Aquitaine, 


THE  GOOD   PARLIAMENT.      1360   TO   137 T. 

which  included  Gascony,  Poitou,  and  Seintonge,  the  Limou- 
sin and  the  Angoumois,  Perigord  and  the  counties  of  Bi- 
gorre  and  Rouergue,  was  not  only  restored  but  freed  from  its 
obligations  as  u  French  fief,  and  granted  in  full  sovereignty 
with  Ponthieu,  Edward's  heritage  from  the  second  wife  of 
Edward  the  First,  as  well  as  with  Guisness  and  his  new 
conquest  of  Calais. 


Section  II.— The  Good  Parliament.     1360—1377. 

[Authorities.— As  in  the  last  period.  An  anonymous  chronicler  whose  work  Ls 
printed  in  the  "  Archaelogia  "  (vol.  22)  gives  the  story  of  the  Good  Parliament  ; 
another  account  is  preserved  in  the  "  Chronica  Angliee  from  1328  to  1388"  (Rolls 
Series),  and  fresh  light  has  been  recently  thrown  on  the  tune  by  the  publication 
of  a  Chronicle  by  Adam  of  Usk  from  1377  to  1404.] 

If  we  turn  from  the  stirring  but  barren  annals  of  foreign 
warfare  to  the  more  fruitful  field  of  constitutional  progress, 
we  are  at  once  struck  with  a  marked  change  which 
takes  place  during  this  period  in  the  composition 
of  Parliament.  The  division,  with  which  we  are 
so  familiar,  into  a  House  of  Lords  and  a  House  of  Commons, 
formed  no  part  of  the  original  plan  of  Edward  the  First ;  in 
the  earlier  Parliaments,  each  of  the  four  orders  of  clergy, 
barons,  knights,  and  burgesses  met,  deliberated,  and  made 
their  grants  apart  from  each  other.  This  isolation,  however 
of  the  Estates  soon  showed  signs  of  breaking  down.  While 
the  clergy,  as  we  have  seen,  held  steadily  aloof  from  any  real 
union  with  its  fellow-orders,  the  knights  of  the  shire  were 
drawn  by  the  similarity  of  their  social  position  into  a  close 
connection  with  the  lords.  They  seem,  in  fact,  to  have  been 
soon  admitted  by  the  baronage  to  an  almost  equal  position 
with  themselves,  whether  as  legislators  or  counselors  of  the 
Crown.  The  burgesses,  on  the  other  hand,  took  little  part 
at  first  in  Parliamentary  proceedings,  save  in  those  which 
related  to  the  taxation  of  their  class.  But  their  position  was 
raised  by  the  strifes  of  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Second, 
when  their  aid  was  needed  by  the  baronage  in  its  struggle 
with  the  Crown  ;  and  their  right  to  share  fully  in  all  legis- 
lative action  was  asserted  in  the  famous  statute  of  1322. 
Gradually,  too,  through  causes  with  which  we  are  imperfectly 
acquainted,  the  knights  of  the  shire  drifted  from  their  older 


294  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

connection  with  the  baronage  into  so  close  and  intimate  a 
union  with  the  representatives  of  the  towns  that  at  the 
opening  of  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third  the  two  orders  are 
found  grouped  formally  together,  under  the  name  of  ''The 
Commons  ; "  and  by  1341  the  final  decision  of  Parliament 
into  two  Houses  was  complete.  It  is  difficult  to  over-estimate 
the  importance  of  this  change.  Had  Parliament  remained 
broken  up  into  its  four  orders  of  clergy,  barons,  knights, 
and  citizens,  its  power  would  have  been  neutralized  at  every 
great  crisis  by  the  jealousies  and  difficulty  of  co-operation 
among  its  component  parts.  A  permanent  union  of  the 
knighthood  and  the  baronage  on  the  other  hand,  would  have 
converted  Parliament  into  a  mere  representative  of  an  aristo- 
cratic caste,  and  would  have  robbed  it  of  the  strength  which 
it  has  drawn  from  its  connection  with  the  great  body  of  the 
commercial  classes.  The  new  attitude  of  the  knighthood, 
their  social  connection  as  landed  gentry  with  the  baronage, 
their  political  union  with  the  burgesses,  really  welded  the 
three  orders  into  one,  and  gave  that  unity  of  feeling  and  ac- 
tion to  our  Parliament  on  which  its  power  has  ever  since 
mainly  depended.  From  the  moment  of  this  change,  indeed, 
we  see  a  marked  increase  of  .parliamentary  activity.  The 
need  of  continual  grants  during  the  war  brought  about  an 
assembly  of  Parliament  year  by  year  ;  and  with  each  supply 
some  step  was  made  to  greater  political  influence.  A  crowd 
of  enactments  for  the  regulation  of  trade,  whether  wise  or 
unwise,  and  for  the  protection  of  the  subject  against  oppres- 
sion or  injustice,  as  well  as  the  great  ecclesiastical  provisions 
of  this  reign,  show  the  rapid  widening  of  the  sphere  of  par- 
liamentary action.  The  Houses  claimed  an  exclusive  right 
to  grant  supplies,  and  asserted  the  principle  of  ministerial 
responsibility  to  Parliament.  But  the  Commons  long  shrank 
from  meddling  with  purely  administrative  matters.  Edward 
in  his  anxiety  to  shift  from  his  shoulders  the  responsibility 
of  the  war  with  France,  referred  to  them  for  counsel  on  the 
subject  of  one  of  the  numerous  propositions  of  peace. 
"  Most  dreaded  lord,"  they  replied,  "as  to  your  war  and  the 
equipment  necessary  for  it,  we  are  so  ignorant  and  simple 
that  we  know  not  how,  nor  have  the  power,  to  devise  • 
wherefore  we  pray  your  Grace  to  excuse  us  in  this  matter, 
and  that  it  please  you,  with  advice  of  the  great  and  wise 


THE   GOOD   PARLIAMENT.      1360   TO   1377.  295 

persons  of  your  Council,  to  ordain  what  seems  best  to  you  for 
the  honor  and  profit  of  yourself  and  of  your  kingdom  ;  and 
whatsoever  shall  be  thus  ordained  by  assent  and  agreement 
on  the  part  of  you  and  your  lords  we  readily  assent  to,  and 
will  hold  it  firmly  established."  But  while  shrinking  from 
so  wide  an  extension  of  their  responsibility,  the  Commons 
wrested  from  the  Crown  a  practical  reform  of  the  highest 
value.  As  yet  their  petitions,  if  granted,  were  often  changed 
or  left  incomplete  in  the  statute  or  ordinance  which  professed 
to  embody  them,  or  were  delayed  till  the  session  had  closed. 
Thus  many  provisions  made  in  Parliament  had  hitherto  been 
evaded  or  set  aside.  But  the  Commons  now  met  this  abuse 
by  a  demand  that  on  the  royal  assent  being  given  their 
petitions  should  be  turned  without  change  into  statutes  of 
the  realm,  and  derive  force  of  law  from  their  entry  on  the 
rolls  of  Parliament. 

The  political  responsibility  which  the  Commons  evaded  was 
at  last  forced  on  them  by  the  misfortunes  of  the  war.  In  spite 
of  quarrels  in  Brittany  and  elsewhere,  peace  was 
fairly  preserved  in  the  nine  years  which  followed 
the  treaty  of  Bretigny ;  but  the  shrewd  eye  of 
Charles  the  Fifth,  the  successor  of  John,  was  watching  keenly 
for  the  moment  of  renewing  the  struggle.  He  had  cleared  his 
kingdom  of  the  freebooters  by  despatching  them  into  Spain, 
and  the  Black  Prince  had  plunged  into  the  revolutions  of 
that  country  only  to  return  from  his  fruitless  victory  of 
Navarete  in  broken  health,  and  impoverished  by  the  expenses 
of  the  campaign.  The  anger  caused  by  the  taxation  which 
this  necessitated  was  fanned  by  Charles  into  revolt.  He 
listened,  in  spite  of  the  treaty,  to  an  appeal  from  the  lords  of 
Aquitaine,  and  summoned  the  Black  Prince  to  his  Court. 
"I  will  come,"  replied  the  Prince,  "but  helmet  on  head, 
and  with  sixty  thousand  men  at  my  back."  War,  however, 
had  hardly  been  declared  before  the  ability  with  which 
Charles  had  laid  his  plans  was  seen  in  his  seizure  of  Pon- 
thieu,  and  in  a  rising  of  the  whole  country  south  of  the 
Garonne.  The  Black  Prince,  borne  on  a  litter  to  the  walls 
of  Limoges,  recovered  the  town,  which  had  been  surrendered 
to  the  French,  and  by  a  merciless  massacre  sullied  the  fame 
of  his  earlier  exploits  ;  but  sickness  recalled  him  home,  and 
the  war,  protracted  by  the  caution  of  Charles,  who  forbade 


296  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

his  armies  to  engage,  did  little  but  exhaust  the  energy  and 
treasures  of  England.  At  last,  however,  the  error  of  the 
Prince's  policy  was  seen  in  the  appearance  of  a  Spanish  fleet 
in  the  Channel,  and  in  a  decisive  victory  which  it  won  over 
an  English  convoy  of  Eochelle.  The  blow  was  in  fact  fatal 
to  the  English  cause  ;  it  wrested  from  Edward  the  mastery 
of  the  seas,  and  cat  off  his  communication  with  Aquitaine. 
Charles  was  roused  to  new  exertions.  Poitou,  Saintonge, 
and  the  Angoumois  yielded  to  his  general  Du  Guesclin,  and 
Eochelle  was  surrendered  by  its  citizens.  A  great  army  under 
the  king's  third  son,  John  of  Gaunt,  Duke  over  Lancaster, 
penetrated  fruitlessly  into  the  heart  of  France.  Charles  had 
forbidden  any  fighting.  "If  a  storm  rages  over  the  land," 
said  the  king,  coolly,  "it  disperses  of  itself;  and  so  will  it 
be  with  the  English."  Winter,  in  fact,  overtook  the  Duke 
in  the  mountains  of  Auvergne,  and  a  mere  fragment  of  his 
host  reached  Bordeaux.  The  failure  was  the  signal  for  a 
general  defection,  and  ere  the  summer  of  1374  had  closed, 
the  two  towns  of  Bordeaux  and  Bayonne  were  all  that  re- 
mained of  the  English  possessions  in  southern  France. 

It  was  a  time  of  shame  and  suffering  such  as  England  had 
never  known.  Her  conquests  were  lost,  her  shores  insulted, 
her  fleets  annihilated,  her  commerce  swept  from  the  seas ; 
Avhile  within  she  was  exhausted  by  the  long  and  costly  war, 
as  well  as  by  the  ravages  of  pestilence.  In  the  hour  of  dis- 
tress the  eyes  of  the  hard-pressed  nobles  arid  knighthood 
turned  greedily  on  the  riches  of  the  Church.  Never  had  her 
spiritual  or  moral  hold  on  the  nation  been  less  ;  never  had 
her  wealth  been  greater.  Out  of  a  population  of  some  three 
millions,  the  ecclesiastics  numbered  between  twenty  and 
thirty  thousand.  Wild  tales  of  their  riches  floated  about. 
They  were  said  to  own  in  landed  property  alone  more  than  a 
third  of  the  soil,  their  "spiritualities"  in  dues  and  offerings 
amounting  to  twice  the  king's  revenue.  The  throng  of 
bishops  round  the  council-board  was  still  more  galling  to  the 
feudal  baronage,  flushed  as  it  was  with  a  new  pride  by  the 
victories  of  Crecy  and  Poitiers.  On  the  renewal  of  the  war 
the  Parliament  prayed  that  the  chief  offices  of  state  might 
be  placed  in  lay  hands.  William  of  Wykeham,  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  resigned  the  Chancellorship,  another  prelate  the 
Treasury,  to  lay  dependents  of  the  great  nobles  ;  and  the 


THE   GOOD   PARLIAMENT.      1360   TO   1377.  297 

panic  of  the  clergy  was  seen  in  large  grants  which  they  voted 
in  convocation.  The  baronage  found  a  leader  in  John  of 
Gaunt  ;  but  even  the  promise  to  pillage  the  Church  failed 
to  win  for  the  Duke  and  his  party  the  good  will  of  the  lesser 
gentry  and  of  the  burgesses  ;  while  the  corruption  and  the 
utter  failure  of  the  new  administration  and  the  calamities  of 
the  war  left  it  powerless  before  the  Parliament  of  1376. 
The  action  of  this  Parliament  marks  a  new  stage  in  the 
character  of  the  national  opposition  to  the  misrule  of  the 
Crown.  Till  now  the  task  of  resistance  had  devolved  on  the 
baronage,  and  had  been  carried  out  through  risings  of  its 
feudal  tenantry  ;  but  the  misgovernment  was  now  that  of  a 
main  part  of  the  baronage  itself  in  actual  conjunction  with 
the  Crown.  Only  in  the  power  of  the  Commons  lay  any 
adequate  means  of  peaceful  redress.  The  old  reluctance  of 
the  Lower  House  to  meddle  with  matters  of  State  was 
roughly  swept  away  therefore  by  the  pressure  of  the  time. 
The  BJack  Prince,  sick  as  he  was  to  death  and  anxious  to 
secure  his  child's  succession  by  the  removal  of  John  of  Gaunt, 
the  prelates  with  William  of  Wykeham  at  their  head,  resolute 
again  to  take  their  place  in  the  royal  councils  and  to  check 
the  projects  of  ecclesiastical  spoliation,  alike  found  in  it  a 
body  to  oppose  to  the  Duke's  administration.  Backed  by 
powers  such  as  these,  the  actions  of  the  Commons  showed 
none  of  their  old  timidity  or  self-distrust.  The  knights  of 
the  shire  united  with  the  burgesses  in  a  joint  attack  on  the 
royal  council.  "Trusting  in  God,  and  standing  with  his 
followers  before  the  nobles,  whereof  the  chief  was  John, 
Duke  of  Lancaster,  whose  doings  were  ever  contrary,  their 
Speaker  Sir  Peter  de  la  Mare,  denounced  the  mismanage- 
ment of  the  war,  the  oppressive  taxation,  and  demanded  an 
account  of  the  expenditure.  "What  do  these  base  and 
ignoble  knights  attempt/' cried  John  of  Gaunt.  "Do  they 
think  they  be  kings  or  princes  of  the  land  ?"  But  even  the 
Duke  was  silenced  by  the  charges  brought  against  the 
government,  and  the  Parliament  proceeded  to  the  impeach- 
ment and  condemnation  of  two  ministers,  Latimer  and 
Lyons.  The  king  himself  had  sunk  into  dotage,  and  was 
wholly  under  the  influence  of  a  mistress  named  Alice  Perrers  ; 
she  was  banished,  and  several  of  the  royal  servants  driven 
from  the  court.  One  hundred  and  forty  petitions  were 


298  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

presented  which  embodied  the  grievances  of  the  realm. 
They  demanded  the  annual  assembly  of  Parliament,  and 
freedom  of  election  for  the  knights  of  the  shire,  whose 
choice  was  now  often  tampered  with  by  the  Crown  ;  they 
protested  against  arbitrary  taxation  and  Papal  inroads  on 
the  liberties  of  the  Church  ;  petitioned  for  the  protection  of 
trade,  the  enforcement  of  the  statute  of  laborers,  and  the 
limitation  of  the  powers  of  chartered  crafts.  At  the  death 
of  the  Black  Prince  his  little  son  ifichard  was  brought  into 
Parliament  and  acknowledged  as  heir.  But  the  Houses 
were  no  sooner  dismissed  than  Lancaster  resumed  his  power. 
His  haughty  will  flung  aside  all  restraints  of  law.  He 
dismissed  the  new  lords  and  prelates  from  the  Council.  He 
called  back  Alice  Perrers  and  the  disgraced  ministers.  He 
declared  the  Good  Parliament  no  parliament,  and  did  not 
suffer  its  petitions  to  be  enrolled  as  statutes.  He  imprisoned 
Peter  de  la  Mare,  and  confiscated  the  possessions  of  William 
of  Wykeham.  His  attack  on  this  prelate  was  an  attack  on 
the  clergy  at  large.  Fresh  projects  of  spoliation  were 
openly  canvassed,  and  it  is  his  support  of  these  plans  of  con- 
fiscation which  now  brings  us  across  the  path  of  John 
Wyclif. 

Section  III.— John  Wyclif. 

[Authorities. — The  "  Fasciculi  Zizaniorum  "  in  the  Rolls  Series,  with  the  docu- 
ments appended  to  it,  is  a  work  of  primary  authority  for  the  history  of  Wyclif 
and  his  followers.  A  selection  from  his  English  tracts  has  been  made  by  Mr.  T. 
Arnold  for  the  University  of  Oxford,  which  has  also  published  his  "  Trias."  The 
version  of  the  Bible  that  bears  his  name  has  been  edited  with  a  valuable  preface 
by  Rev.  J.  Forshall  and  Sir  F.  Madden.  There  are  lives  of  Wyclif  by  Lewis  and 
Vaughan  ;  and  Milman  ("  Latin  Christianity,"  vol.  vi.)  has  given  a  brilliant 
summary  of  the  Lollard  movement.] 

Nothing  is  more  remarkable  than  the  contrast  between  the 
obscurity  of  Wyclif's  earlier  life  and  the  fulness  and  vividness 

of  our  knowledge  of  him  during  the  twenty  years 
Wyclif.  which  preceded  its  close.  Born  in  the  earlier  part 

of  the  fourteenth  century,  he  had  already  passed 
middle  age  when  he  was  appointed  to  the  mastership  of 
Balliol  College  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  and  recognized 
as  first  among  the  schoolmen  of  his  day.  Of  all  the 
scholastic  doctors  those  of  England  had  been  throughout  the 
keenest  and  the  most  daring  in  philosophical  speculation  ; 


JOHN   WYCLLF. 

a  reckless  audacity  and  love  of  novelty  was  the  common  note 
of  Bacon,  Duns  Scotus,  and  Ockham,  as  against  the  sober 
and  more  disciplined  learning  of  the  Parisian  schoolmen, 
Albert  and  Aquinas.  But  the  decay  of  the  University  of 
Paris  during  the  English  wars  was  transferring  her  intel- 
lectual supremacy  to  Oxford,  and  in  Oxford  Wyclif  stood 
without  a  rival.  From  his  predecessor,  Bradwardine,  whose 
work  as  a  scholastic  teacher  he  carried  on  in  the  speculative 
treatises  he  published  during  this  period,  he  inherited  the 
tendency  to  a  predestinarian  Augustinianism  which  formed 
the  groundwork  of  his  later  theological  revolt.  His  debt  to 
Ockham  revealed  itself  in  his  earliest  efforts  at  Church 
reform.  Undismayed  by  the  thunder  and  excommunications 
of  the  Church,  Ockham  had  not  shrunk  in  his  enthusiasm 
for  the  Empire  from  attacking  the  foundations  of  the  Papal 
supremacy  or  from  asserting  the  rights  of  the  civil  power. 
The  spare,  emaciated  frame  of  Wyclif,  weakened  by  study 
and  by  asceticism,  hardly  promised  a  Reformer  who  would 
carry  on  the  stormy  work  of  Ockham  ;  but  within  this  frail 
form  lay  a  temper  quick  and  restless,  an  immense  energy,  an 
immovable  conviction,  an  unconquerable  pride.  The  personal 
charm  which  ever  accompanies  real  greatness  only  deepened 
the  influence  he  derived  from  the  spotless  purity  of  his  life. 
As  yet  indeed  even  Wyclif  himself  can  hardly  have  suspected 
the  immense  range  of  his  intellectual  power.  It  was  only  the 
struggle  that  lay  before  him  which  revealed  in  the  dry  and 
subtle  schoolman  the  founder  of  our  later  English  prose,  a 
master  of  popular  invective,  of  irony,  of  persuasion,  a 
dexterous  politician,  an  audacious  partisan,  the  organizer  of 
a  religious  order,  the  unsparing  assailant  of  abuses,  the  boldest 
and  most  indefatigable  of  controversialists,  the  first  Reformer 
who  dared,  when  deserted  and  alone,  to  question  and  deny 
the  creed  of  the  Christendom  around  him,  to  break  through 
the  tradition  of  the  past,  and  with  his  last  breath  to  assert 
the  freedom  of  religious  thought  against  the  dogmas  of  the 
Papacy. 

The  attack  of  Wyclif  began  precisely  at  the  moment  when 
the  Church  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  sunk  to  its  lowest  point 
of  spiritual  decay.     The  transfer  of  the  papacy  to     England 
Avignon  robbed  it  of  half  the  awe  in  which  it  had     and  the 
been  held  by  Englishmen,  for  not  only  had  the 


300  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Popes  sunk  into  creatures  of  the  French  king,  but  their 
greed  and  extortion  produced  almost  universal  revolt.  The 
claim  of  first-fruits  and  a-nnates  from  rectory  and  bishopric, 
the  assumption  of  a  right  to  dispose  of  all  benefices  in  eccle- 
siastical patronage,  the  direct  taxation  of  the  clergy,  the 
intrusion  of  foreign  priests  into  English  livings,  the  opening 
a  mart  for  the  disposal  of  pardons,  dispensations,  and  indul- 
gences, and  the  encouragement  of  appeals  to  the  Papal  court 
produced  a  widespread  national  irritation  which  never  slept 
till  the  Reformation.  The  people  scorned  a  "  French  Pope," 
and  threatened  his  legates  with  stoning  when  they  landed. 
The  wit  of  Chaucer  flouted  the  wallet  of  "  pardons  hot  from 
Rome."  Parliament  vindicated  the  right  of  the  State  to 
prohibit  any  questioning  of  judgments  rendered  in  the  king's 
courts,  or  any,  prosecution  of  a  suit  in  foreign  courts,  by  the 
Statute  of  Prasmunire  ;  and  denied  the  Papal  claim  to  dispose 
of  benefices  by  that  of  Provisors.  But' the  effort  was  practi- 
cally foiled  by  the  treacherous  diplomacy  of  the  Crown. 
The  Pope  waived  indeed  his  alleged  right  to  appoint  foreigners; 
but  by  a  compromise,  in  which  Pope  and  King  combined  for 
the  enslaving  of  the  Church,  bishoprics,  abbacies,  and 
livings'  in  the  gift  of  Churchmen  still  continued  to  receive 
Papal  nominees  who  had  been  first  chosen  by  the  Crown,  so 
that  the  treasuries  of  King  and  Pope  profited  by  the  arrange- 
ment. The  protest  of  the  Good  Parliament  is  a  record  of  the 
ill-success  of  its  predecessors'  attempts.  It  asserted  that  the 
taxes  levied  by  the  Pope  amounted  to  five  times  the  amount 
of  those  levied  by  the  king,  that  by  reservation  during  the 
life  of  actual  holders  the  Pope  disposed  of  the  same  bishopric 
four  or  five  times  over,  receiving  each  time  the  first  fruits. 
"  The  brokers  of  the  sinful  city  of  Rome  promote  for  money 
unlearned  and  unworthy  caitiffs  to  benefices  of  the  value  of 
*a  thousand  marks  while  the  poor  and  learned  hardly  obtain 
one  of  twenty.  So  decays  sound  learning.  They  present 
aliens  who  neither  see  nor  care  to  see  their  parishioners, 
despise  God's  services,  convey  away  the  treasure  of  the  realm, 
and  are  worse  than  Jews  or  Saracens.  The  Pope's  revenue 
from  England  alone  is  larger  than  that  of  any  prince  in 
Christendom.  God  gave  his  sheep  to  be  pastured,  not  to  be 
shaven  and  shorn."  The  grievances  were  no  trifling  ones. 
At  this  very  time  the  deaneries  of  Lichfield,  Salisbury  and 


JOHN   WYCLIF.  301 

York,  the  archdeaconry  of  Canterbury,  which  was  reputed 
the  wealthiest  English  benefice,  together  with  a  host  of 
prebends  and  preferments,  were  held  by  Italian  cardinals  and 
priests,  while  the  Pope's  collector  from  his  office  in  London 
sent  twenty  thousand  marks  a  year  to  the  Papal  treasury. 

If  extortion  and  tyranny  such  as  this  severed  the  English 
clergy  from  the  Papacy,  their  own  selfishness  severed  them 
from  the  nation  at  large.  Immense  as  was  their  £^1^4 
wealth,  they  bore  as  little  as  they  could  of  the  and  the 
common  burdens  of  the  realm.  They  were  still  Church, 
resolute  to  assert  their  exemption  from  the  common  justice 
of  the  land,  and  the  mild  punishments  of  the  ecclesiastical 
courts  carried  little  dismay  into  the  mass  of  disorderly  clerks. 
Privileged  as  they  were  against  all  interference  from  the  lay 
world  without,  the  clergy  penetrated  by  their  control  over 
wills,  contracts,  divorce,  by  the  dues  they  exacted,  as  well 
as  by  directly  religious  offices,  into  the  very  heart  of  the 
social  life  around  them.  No  figure  was  better  known  or  more 
hated  than  the  summoner  who  enforced  the  jurisdiction  and 
levied  the  dues  of  their  courts.  On  the  other  hand,  their 
moral  authority  was  rapidly  passing  away ;  the  wealthiest 
churchmen,  with  curled  hair  and  hanging  sleeves,  aped  the 
costume  of  the  knightly  society  to  which  they  really  be- 
longed. We  have  already  seen  the  general  impression  of 
their  worldliness  in  Chaucer's  picture  of  the  hunting  monk 
and  the  courtly  prioress  with  her  love-motto  on  her  brooch. 
Over  the  vice  of  the  higher  classes  they  exerted  no  influence 
whatever ;  the  king  paraded  his  mistress  as  a  queen  of 
beauty  through  London,  the  nobles  blazoned  their  infamy 
in  court  and  tournament.  "  In  those  days,"  says  a  chronicler 
of  the  time,  "  arose  a  great  rumor  and  clamor  among  the 
people,  that  wherever  there  was  a  tournament  there  came  a 
great  concourse  of  ladies  of  the  most  costly  and  beautiful, 
but  not  of  the  best  in  the  kingdom,  sometimes  forty  or  fifty 
in  number,  as  if  they  were  a  part  of  the  tournament,  in 
diverse  and  wonderful  male  apparel,  in  particolored  tunics, 
with  short  caps  and  bands  wound  cord  wise  round  their  head, 
and  girdles  bound  with  gold  and  silver,  and  daggers  in 
pouches  across  their  body,  and  then  they  proceeded  on  chosen 
coursers  to  the  place  of  tourney,  and  so  expended  and  wasted 
their  goods  and  vexed  their  bodies  with  scurrilous  wanton- 


802  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

ness  that  the  rumor  of  the  people  sounded  everywhere  ;  and 
thus  they  neither  feared  God  nor  blushed  at  the  chaste  voice 
of  the  people.'"  They  were  not  called  on  to  blush  at  the  chaste 
voice  of  the  Church.  The  clergy  were  in  fact  rent  by  their 
own  dissensions.  The  higher  prelates  were  busy  with  the  cares 
of  political  office,  and  severed  from  the  lower  priesthood  by  the 
scandalous  inequality  between  the  revenues  of  the  wealthier 
ecclesiastics  and  the  "poor  parson"  of  the  country.  A 
bitter  hatred  divided  the  secular  clergy  from  the  regular  ; 
and  this  strife  went  fiercely  on  in  the  Universities.  Fitz- 
Ralf,  the  Chancellor  of  Oxford,  attributed  to  the  Friars  the 
decline  in  the  number  of  academical  students,  and  the  Uni- 
versity checked  by  statute  their  admission  of  mere  children 
into  their  orders.  The  older  religious  orders  in  fact  had 
sunk  into  mere  landowners,  while  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
Friars  had  in  great  part  died  away  and  left  a  crowd  of  im- 
pudent mendicants  behind  it.  Wyclif  could  soon  with  gen- 
eral applause  denounce  them  as  sturdy  beggars,  and  declare 
that  "  the  man  who  gives  alms  to  a  begging  friar  is  ipso 
facto  excommunicate." 

Without  the  ranks  of  the  clergy  stood  a  world  of  earnest 
men  who,  like  "  Piers  the  Plowman,"  denounced  their 
Wyclif  and  worldliness  and  vice,  skeptics  like  Chaucer  laugh- 
Church  ing  at  the  jingling  bells  of  their  hunting  abbots, 
Eeform.  an(j  ^g  krutal  and  greedy  baronage  under  John 
of  Gaunt,  eager  to  drive  the  prelates  from  office  and  to  seize 
on  their  wealth.  Worthless  as  the  last  party  seems  to  us,  it 
was  with  John  of  Gaunt  that  Wyclif  allied  himself  in  his 
effort  for  the  reform  of  the  Church.  As  yet  his  quarrel  was 
not  with  the  doctrines  of  Home  but  with  its  practise,  and  it 
was  on  the  principles  of  Ockham  that  he  defended  the  Par- 
liament's indignant  refusal  of  the  "tribute"  which  was 
claimed  by  the  Papacy.  But  his  treatise  on  "  The  Kingdom 
of  God"  (De  Dominio  Divino)  shows  how  different  his  aims 
really  were  from  the  selfish  aims  of  the  men  with  whom  he 
acted.  In  this,  the  most  famous  of  his  works,  Wycliff  bases 
his  action  on  a  distinct  ideal  of  society.  All  authority,  to 
use  his  own  expression,  is  "founded  in  grace."  Dominion 
in  the  highest  sense  is  in  God  alone  ;  it  is  God  who,  .as  the 
suzerain  of  the  universe,  deals  out  His  rule  in  fief  to  rulers 
ill  their  various  stations  on  tenure  of  their  obedience  to  Him- 


JOHN   WYCLUT.  80ft 

self.  It  was  easy  10  object  that  in  such  a  case  "  dominion  " 
could  never  exist,  since  mortal  sin  is  a  breach  of  such  a 
tenure,  and  all  men  sin.  But,  as  Wyclif  urged  it,  the  theory 
is  a  purely  ideal  one.  In  actual  practise  he  distinguishes 
between  dominion  and  power,  power  which  the  wicked  may 
have  by  God's  permission,  and  to  which  the  Christian  must 
submit  from  motives  of  obedience  to  God.  In  his  own 
scholastic  phrase,  so  strangely  perverted  afterwards,  here  on 
earth  "  God  must  obey  the  devil."  But  whether  in  the  ideal 
or  practical  view  of  the  matter,  all  power  or  dominion  was  of 
God.  It  was  granted  by  Him  not  to  one  person,  His  Vicar 
on  earth,  as  the  Papacy  alleged,  but  to  all.  The  king  was 
as  truly  God's  Vicar  as  the  Pope.  The  royal  power  was  as 
sacred  as  the  ecclesiastical,  and  as  complete  over  temporal 
things,  even  the  temporalities  of  the  Church,  as  that  of  the 
Church  over  spiritual  things.  On  the  question  of  Church 
and  State  therefore  the  distinction  between  the  ideal  and 
practical  view  of  "  dominion  "  was  of  little  account.  Wyclif 's 
application  of  the 'theory  to  the  individual  conscience  was  of 
far  higher  and  wider  importance.  Obedient  as  each  Christian 
might  be  to  king  or  priest,  he  himself,  as  a  possessor  of 
"dominion,"  held  immediately  of  God.  The  throne  of  God 
Himself  was  the  tribunal  of  personal  appeal.  What  the 
Reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century  attempted  to  do  by  their 
theory  of  Justification  by  Faith,  Wyclif  attempted  to  do  by 
his  theory  of  "  dominion."  It  was  a  theory  which  in  estab- 
lishing a  direct  relation  between  man  and  God  swept  away 
the  whole  basis  of  a  mediating  priesthood  on  which  the  me- 
dieval Church  was  built  ;  but  for  a  time  its  real  drift  was 
hardly  perceived.  To  Wyclif's  theory  of  Church  and  State, 
his  subjection  of  their  temporalities  to  the  Crown,  .his  con- 
tention that  like  other  property  they  might  be  seized  and  em- 
ployed for  national  purposes,  his  wish  for  their  voluntary 
abandonment  and  the  return  of  the  Church  to  its  original 
poverty,  the  clergy  were  more  sensitive.  They  were  bitterly 
galled  when  he  came  forward  as  the  theological  bulwark  of 
the  Lancastrian  party  at  a  time  when  they  were  writhing 
under  the  attack  on  Wykeham  by  the  nobles  ;  and  in  the 
persecution  of  Wyclif,  they  resolved  to  return  blow  for  blow. 
He  was  summoned  before  Bishop  Courtenay  of  London  to 
answer  for  his  heretical  propositions  concerning  the  wealth 


304  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

of  the  Church.  The  Duke  of  Lancaster  accepted  the  chal- 
lenge as  really  given  to  himself,  and  stood  by  Wyclif's  side  in 
the  Consistory  Court  at  St.  Paul's.  But  no  trial  took  place. 
Fierce  words  passed  between  the  nobles  and  the  prelate  ;  the 
Duke  himself  was  said  to  have  threatened  to  drag  Courtenay 
out  of  the  church  by  the  hair  of  his  head,  and  at  last  the 
London  populace,  to  whom  John  of  Gaunt  was  hateful,  burst 
in  to  their  Bishop's  rescue,  and  AVyclif's  life  was  saved  with 
difficulty  by  the  aid  of  the  soldiery.  But  his  courage  only 
grew  with  the  danger.  A  Papal  bull  which  was  procured  by 
the  bishops,  directing  the  University  to  condemn  and  arrest 
him,  extorted  from  him  a  bold  defiance.  In  a  defense  circu- 
lated widely  through  the  kingdom  and  laid  before  Parliament, 
Wyclif  broadly  asserted  that  no  man  could  be  excommuni- 
cated by  the  Pope  "unless  he  were  first  excommunicated  by 
himself."  He  denied  the  right  of  the  Church  to  exact  or  de- 
fend temporal  privileges  by  spiritual  censures,  declared  that 
a  Church  might  justly  be  deprived  by  the  king  or  lay  lords 
of  its  property  for  defect  of  duty,  and  defended  the  subjection 
of  ecclesiastics  to  civil  tribunals.  Bold  as  the  defiance  was,  it 
won  the  support  of  the  people  and  of  the  Crown.  When  he 
appeared  at  the  close  of  the  year  in  Lambeth  Chapel  to  an- 
swer the  Archbishop's  summons,  a  message  from  the  Court 
forbade  the  Primate  to  proceed,  and  the  Londoners  broke  in 
and  dissolved  the  session. 

Wyclif  was  still  working  hand  in  hand  with  John  of  Gaunt 
in  advocating  his  plans  of  ecclesiastical  reform,  when  the 

great  insurrection  of  the  peasants,  which  we  shall 
Protestant    soon  ^avc  ^°  describe,  broke  out  under  Wat  Tyler. 

In  a  few  months  the  whole  of  his-  work  was 
undone.  Not  only  was  the  power  of  the  Lancastrian  party 
on  which  Wyclif  had  relied  for  the  moment  annihilated,  but 
the  quarrel  between  the  baronage  and  the  Church,  on  which 
his  action  had  hitherto  been  grounded,  was  hushed  in  the 
presence  of  a  common  danger.  His  "  poor  preachers  "  were 
looked  on  as  missionaries  of  socialism.  The  Friars  charged 
him  with  being  a  "  sower  of  strife,  who  by  his  serpent-like 
instigation  has  set  the  serf  against  his  lord/'  and  though 
Wycliff  tossed  back  the  charge  with  disdain,  he  had  to  bear 
a  suspicion  which  was  justified  by  the  conduct  of  some  of  his 
followers.  John  Ball,  who  had  figured  in  the  front  rank  ot' 


JOHN    WYCLIF.  305 

the  revolt  was  claimed  as  one  of  his  adherents,  and  was  alleged 
to  have  denounced  in  his  last  hour  the  conspiracy  of  the 
"  Wyclifites."  His  most  prominent  scholar,  Nicholas 
Herford,  was  said  to  have  openly  approved  the  brutal  murder 
of  Archbishop  Sudbury.  Whatever  belief  such  charges 
might  gain,  it  is  certain  that  from  this  moment  all  plans  for 
the  reorganization  of  the  Church  were  confounded  in  the 
general  odium  which  attached  to  the  projects  of  the  peasant 
leaders,  and  that  any  hope  of  ecclesiastical  reform  at  the 
hands  of  the  baronage  and  the  Parliament  was  at  an  end. 
But  even  if  the  Peasant  Revolt  had  not  deprived  Wyclif  of 
the  support  of  the  aristocratic  party  with  whom  he  had  hith- 
erto cooperated,  their  alliance  must  have  been  dissolved 
by  the  new  theological  position  which  he  had  already  taken 
up.  Some  months  before  the  outbreak  of  the  insurrection, 
he  had  by  one  memorable  step  passed  from  the  position  of  a 
reformer  of  the  discipline  and  political  relations  of  the 
Church  to  that  of  a  protester  against  its  cardinal  beliefs. 
If  there  was  one  doctrine  upon  which  the  supremacy  of  the 
Medieval  Church  rested,  it  was  the  doctrine  of  Transubstan- 
tiation.  It  was  by  his  exclusive  right  to  the  performance  of 
the  miracle  which  was  wrought  in  the  mass  that  the  lowliest 
priest  was  raised  high  above  princes.  With  the  formal  denial 
of  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation  which  Wyclif  issued 
in  the  spring  of  1381  began  that  great  movement  of  revolt 
which  ended,  more  than  a  century  after,  in  the  establish- 
ment of  religious  freedom,  by  severing  the  mass  of  the 
Teutonic  peoples  from  the  general  body  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  The  act  was  the  bolder  that  he  stood  utterly  alone. 
The  University,  in  which  his  influence  had  been  hitherto 
all-powerful,  at  once  condemned  him.  John  of  Gaunt 
enjoined  him  to  be  silent.  Wyclif  was  presiding  as  Doctor 
of  Divinity  over  some  disputations  in  the  schools  of  the 
Augustinian  Canons  when  his  academical  condemnation  was 
publicly  read,  but  though  startled  for  the  moment  he  at 
once  challenged  Chancellor  or  doctor  to  disprove  the  con- 
clusions at  which  he  had  arrived.  The  prohibition  of  the 
Duke  of  Lancaster  he  met  by  an  open  avowal  of  his  teach- 
ing, a  confession  which  closes  proudly  with  the  quiet  words, 
"I  believe  that  in  the  end  the  truth  will  conquer."  For  the 
moment  his  courage  dispelled  the  panic  around  him.  The 

30 


306  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

University  responded  to  his  appeal,  and  by  displacing  his 
opponents  from  office  tacitly  adopted  his  cause.  But 
Wyclif  no  longer  looked  for  support  to  the  learned  or 
wealthier  classes  on  whom  he  had  hitherto  relied.  He  ap- 
pealed, and  the  appeal  is  memorable  as  the  first  of  such  a 
kind  in  our  history,  to  England  at  large.  With  an  amazing 
industry  he  issued  tract  after  tract  in  the  tongue  of  the 
people  itself.  The  dry,  syllogistic  Latin,  the  abstruse  and 
involved  argument  which  the  great  doctor  had  addressed  to 
his  academic  hearers,  were  suddenly  flung  aside,  and  by  a 
transition  which  marks  the  wonderful  genius  of  the  man  the 
schoolman  was  transformed  into  the  pamphleteer.  If  Chaucer 
is  the  father  of  our  later  English  poetry,  Wyclif  is  the  father 
of  our  later  English  prose.  The  rough,  clear,  homely  Eng- 
lish of  his  tracts,  the  speech  of  the  plowman  and  the  trader 
of  the  day,  though  colored  with  the  picturesque  phraseology 
of  the  Bible,  is  in  its  literary  use  as  distinctly  a  creation  of 
his  own  as  the  style  in  which  he  embodied  it,  the  terse 
vehement  sentences,  the  stinging  sarcasms,  the  hard  anti- 
theses which  roused  the  dullest  mind  like  a  whip.  Once 
fairly  freed  from  the  trammels  of  unquestioning  belief, 
Wyclif's  mind  worked  fast  in  its  career  of  skepticism.  Par- 
dons, indulgences,  absolutions,  pilgrimages  to  the  shrines  of 
the  saints,  worship  of  their  images,  worship  of  the  saints  them- 
selves, were  successively  denied.  A  formal  appeal  to  the 
Bible  as  the  one  ground  of  faith,  coupled  with  an  assertion 
of  the  right  of  every  instructed  man  to  examine  the  Bible 
for  himself,  threatened  the  very  groundwork  of  the  older 
dogmatism  with  ruin.  Nor  were  these  daring  denials  con- 
fined to  the  small  circle  of  the  scholars  who  still  clung  to  him  ; 
with  the  practical  ability  which  is  so  marked  a  feature  of  his 
character,  Wyclif  had  organized  some  few  years  before  an 
order  of  poor  preachers,  "  the  Simple  Priests/'  whose  coarse 
sermons  and  long  russet  dress  moved  the  laughter  of  the 
clergy,  but  who  now  formed  a  priceless  organization  for  the 
diffusion  of  their  master's  doctrines.  How  rapid  their  prog- 
ress must  have  been  we  may  see  from  the  panic-struck  ex- 
aggerations of  their  opponents.  A  few  years  later  they 
complained  that  the  followers  of  Wyclif  abounded  every- 
where and  in  all  classes,  among  the  baronage,  in  the 
cities,  among  the  peasantry  of  the  countryside,  even  in  the 


JOHN   WTCLIF.  307 

monastic  cell  itself.     "Every  second  man  one  meets  is  a 
Lollard/' 

"  Lollard,"  a  word  which  probably  means  "  idle  babbler/* 
was  the  nickname  of  scorn  with  which  the  orthodox  Church- 
men chose  to  insult  their  assailants.  But  this  Oxford 
rapid  increase  changed  their  scorn  into  vigorous  and  the 
action.  Courtenay,  now  become  Archbishop,  LoUaild8' 
summoned  a  council  at  Blackfriars,  and  formally  submitted 
twenty-four  propositions  drawn  from  Wyclif's  works.  An 
earthquake  in  the  midst  of  the  proceedings  terrified  every 
prelate  but  the  resolute  Primate  ;  the  expulsion  of  ill 
humors  from  the  earth,  he  said,  was  of  good  omen  for  the 
expulsion  of  ill  humors  from  the  Church;  and  the  condem- 
nation was  pronounced.  Then  the  Archbishop  turned 
fiercely  upon  Oxford  as  the  fount  and  center  of  the  new 
heresies.  In  an  English  sermon  at  St.  Frideswide's,  Nich- 
olas Herford  had  asserted  the  truth  of  Wyclif's  doctrines, 
and  Courtenay  ordered  the  Chancellor  to  silence  him  and  his 
adherents  on  pain  of  being  himself  treated  as  a  heretic.  The 
Chancellor  fell  back  on  the  liberties  of  the  University,  and 
appointed  as  preacher  another  "Wyclifite,  Repyngdon,  who 
did  not  hesitate  to  style  the  Lollards  "  holy  priests/'  and  to 
affirm  that  they  were  protected  by  John  of  Gaunt.  Party 
spirit  meanwhile  ran  high  among  the  students  ;  the  bulk  of 
them  sided  with  the  Lollard  leaders,  and  a  Carmelite,  Peter 
Stokes,  who  had  procured  the  Archbishop's  letters,  cowered 
panic-stricken  in  his  chamber  while  the  Chancellor,  pro- 
tected by  an  escort  of  a  hundred  townsmen,  listened  approv- 
ingly to  Repyngdon 's  defiance.  "I  dare  go  no  further," 
wrote  the  poor  Friar  to  the  Archbishop,  "for  fear  of  death  ;" 
but  he  soon  mustered  courage  to  descend  into  the  schools 
where  Repyngdon  was  now  maintaining  that  the  clerical 
order  was  "  better  when  it  was  but  nine  years  old  than  now 
that  it  has  grown  to  a  thousand  years  and  more."  The  ap- 
pearance, however,  of  scholars  in  arms  again  drove  Stokes  to 
fly  in  despair  to  Lambeth,  while  a  new  heretic  in  open  Con- 
gregation maintained  Wyclif's  denial  of  Transubstantiation. 
"  There  is  no  idolatry,"  cried  William  James,  "  save  in  the 
Sacrament  of  the  Altar."  "You  speak  like  a  wise  man," 
replied  the  Chancellor,  Robert  Rygge.  Courtenay  however 
was  not  the  man  to  bear  defiance  tamely,  and  his  summon? 


308  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

to  Lambeth  wrested  a  submission  from  Rygge  which  waa 
only  accepted  on  his  pledge  to  suppress  the  Lollardism  of 
the  University.  f '  I  dare  not  publish  them,  on  fear  of  death/5 
exclaimed  the  Chancellor  when  Courtenay  handed  him  his 
letters  of  condemnation.  "  Then  is  your  University  an 
open  fautor  of  heretics/'  retorted  the  Primate,  "  if  it  suffers 
not  the  Catholic  truth  to  be  proclaimed  within  its  bounds." 
The  royal  council  supported  the  Archbishop's  injunction,  but 
the  publication  of  the  decrees  at  once  set  Oxford  on  fire. 
The  scholars  threatened  death  against  the  Friars,  "crying 
that  they  wished  to  destroy  the  University."  The  masters 
suspended  Henry  Crump  from  teaching,  as  a  troubler  of  the 
public  peace,  for  calling  the  Lollards  "  heretics."  The 
Crown  however  at  last  stepped  roughly  in  to  Courtenay's 
aid,  and  a  royal  writ  ordered  the  instant  banishment  of  all 
favorers  of  Wyclif,  with  the  seizure  and  destruction  of  all 
Lollard  books,  on  pain  of  forfeiture  of  the  University's  priv- 
ileges. The  threat  produced  its  effect.  Herford  and  Rep- 
yngdon  appealed  in  vain  to  John  of  Gaunt  for  protection  ; 
the  Duke  himself  denounced  them  as  heretics  against  the 
Sacrament  of  the  Altar,  and  after  much  evasion  they  were 
forced  to  make  a  formal  submission.  Within  Oxford  itself 
the  suppression  of  Lollardism  was  complete,  but  with  the 
death  of  religious  freedom  all  trace  of  intellectual  life  sud- 
denly disappears.  The  century  which  followed  the  triumphs 
of  Courtenay  is  the  most  barren  in  its  annals,  nor  was  the 
sleep  of  the  University  broken  till  the  advent  of  the  New 
Learning  restored  to  it  some  of  the  life  and  liberty  which 
the  Primate  had  so  roughly  trodden  out. 

Nothing  marks  more  strongly  the  grandeur  of  Wyclif's  pos- 
ition as  the  last  of  the  great  schoolmen,  than  the  reluctance 
of  so  bold  a  man  as  Courtenay  even  after  his 

of  w^Uf11  triumph  over  Oxford  to  take  extreme  measures 
against  the  head  of  Lollardry.  Wyclif,  though 
summoned,  had  .made  no  appearance  before  the  "  Council 
of  the  Earthquake,"  "Pontius  Pilate  and  Herod  are 
made  friends  to-day,"  was  his  bitter  comment  on  the  new 
union  which  proved  to  have  sprung  up  between  the  prel- 
ates and  the  monastic  orders  who  had  so  long  been  at 
variance  with  each  other  ;  "  since  they  have  made  a  heretic  of 
Christ,  it  is  an  easy  inference  for  them  to  count  simple 


JOHN   WYCLIF.  309 

Christians  heretics."  He  seems  indeed  to  have  been  sick 
at  the  moment,  but  the  announcement  of  the  final  sentence 
roused  him  to  life  again.  "  I  shall  not  die/'  he  is  said  to 
have  cried  at  an  earlier  time  when  in  grievous  peril,  "  but 
live  and  declare  the  works  of  the  Friars."  He  petitioned 
the  King  and  Parliament  that  he  might  be  allowed  freely  to 
prove  the  doctrines  he  had  put  forth,  and  turning  with  char- 
acteristic energy  to  the  attack  of  his  assailants,  he  asked  that 
all  religious  vows  might  be  suppressed,  that  tithes  might  be 
diverted  to  the  maintenance  of  the  poor  and  the  clergy  main- 
tained by  the  free  alms  of  their  flocks,  that  the  Statutes  of 
Pro  visors  and  Pnemunire  might  be  enforced  against  the 
Papacy,  that  churchmen  might  be  declared  incapable  of  sec- 
ular offices,  and  imprisonment  for  excommunication  cease. 
Finally,  in  the  teeth  of  the  council's  condemnation,  he  de- 
manded that  the  doctrine  of  the  Eucharist  which  he  advo- 
cated might  be  freely  taught.  If  he  appeared  in  the  follow- 
ing year  before  the  Convocation  at  Oxford,  it  was  to  perplex 
his  opponents  by  a  display  of  scholastic  logic  wnich  permitted 
him  to  retire  without  any  retractation  of  his  sacramental 
heresy.  For  the  time  his  opponents  seemed  satisfied  with 
his  expulsion  from  the  University,  but  in  his  retirement  at 
Lutterworth  he  was  forging  during  these  troubled  years  the 
great  weapon  which,  wielded  by  other  hands  than  his  own, 
was  to  produce  so  terrible  an  effect  on  the  triumphant  hier- 
archy. An  earlier  translation  of  the  Scriptures,  in  part  of 
which  he  was  aided  by  his  scholar  Herford,  was  being  revised 
and  brought  to  the  second  form,  which  is  better  known  as 
"  Wyclif  s  Bible/'  when  death  drew  near.  The  appeal  of 
the  prelates  to  Rome  was  answered  at  last  by  a  brief  order- 
ing him  to  appear  at  the  Papal  Court.  His  failing  strength 
exhausted  itself  in  the  cold  sarcastic  reply  which  explained 
that  his  refusal  to  comply  with  .the  summons  simply  sprang 
from  broken  health/  "I  am  always  glad,"  ran  the  ironical 
answer,  "  to  explain  my  faith  to  any  one,  and  above  all  to 
the  Bishop  of  Rome  ;  for  I  take  it  for  granted  that  if  it  be 
orthodox  he  will  confirm  it,  if  it  be  erroneous  he  will  correct 
it.  I  assume,  too,  that  as  chief  Vicar  of  Christ  upon  earth 
the  Bishop  of  Rome  is  of  all  mortal  men  most  bound  to  the 
law  of  Christ's  Gospel,  for  among  the  disciples  of  Christ 
a  majority  is  not  reckoned  by  simply  counting  heads  in  the 


310  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

fashion  of  this  world,  but  according  to  the  imitation  of  Christ 
on  either  side.  Now  Christ  during  His  life  upon  earth  was  of 
all  men  the  poorest,  casting  from  Him  all  worldly  authority. 
I  deduce  from  these  premises,  as  a  simple  counsel  of  my  own, 
that  the  Pope  should  surrender  all  temporal  authority  to  the 
civil  power  and  advise  his  clergy  to  do  the  same."  The 
boldness  of  his  words  sprang  perhaps  from  a  knowledge  that 
his  end  was  near.  The  terrible  strain  on  energies  enfeebled 
by  age  and  study  had  at  last  brought  its  inevitable  result, 
and  a  stroke  of  paralysis  while  Wyclif  was  hearing  mass  in  his 
parish  church  of  Lutterworth  was  followed  on  the  next  day 
by  his  death. 


Section  IV.— The  Peasant  Revolt.    1377—1381. 

[Authorities. — For  the  condition  of  land  and  labor  at  this  time  seethe  "His- 
tory of  Prices,"  by  Professor  Thorold  Rogers,  the  "  Domesday  Book  of  St.  Paul's  " 
(Camden  Society)  with  Archdaacon  Hale's  valuable  introduction,  and  Mr.  See- 
bohm's  "  Essays  on  the  Black  Death  "  (Fortnightly  Review,  1865).  Among  the 
chroniclers  Knyghton  and  Walsingham  are  the  fullest  and  most  valuable.  The 
great  Labor  Statutes  will  be  found  in  the  Parliamentary  Rolls.] 

The  religious  revolutions  which  we  have  been  describing 
gave  fresh  impulse  to  a  revolution  of  even  greater  importance, 
The  which  had  for  a  long  time  been  changing  the 
English  whole  face  of  the  country.  The  manorial  system, 
Manor.  on  winch  the  social  organization  of  every  rural  part 
of  England  rested,  had  divided  the  land,  for  the  purposes  of 
cultivation  and  of  internal  order,  into  a  number  of  large  es- 
tates ;  a  part  of  the  soil  was  usually  retained  by  the  owner  of  the 
manor  as  his  demesne  or  home-farm,  while  the  remainder  was 
distributed  among  tenants  who  were  bound  to  render  service  to 
their  lord.  Under  the  kings  of  Alfred's  house,  the  number 
of  absolute  slaves,  and  the  number  of  freemen,  had  alike  di- 
minished. The  slave  class,  never  numerous,  had  been  re- 
duced by  the  efforts  of  the  Church,  perhaps  by  the  general 
convulsion  of  the  Danish  wars.  But  these  wars  had  often 
driven  the  ceorl  or  freeman  to  "  commend  "  himself  to  a  thegn 
who  pledged  him  his  protection  in  consideration  of  a  labor- 
payment.  It  is  probable  that  these  dependent  ceorls  are  the 
"villeins"  of  the  Norman  epoch,  men  sunk  indeed  from 
pure  freedom  and  bound  both  to  soil  and  lord,  but  as  yet  pre- 


THE   PEASANT    REVOLT.      1877   TO    1381. 

serving  much  of  their  older  rights,  retaining  their  laud,  free  aa 
against  all  men  bat  their  lord,  and  still  sending  representa- 
tives to  hundred-moot  and  shire-moot.  They  stood  therefore 
far  above  the  "  landless  man/'  the  man  who  had  never  possessed 
even  under  the  old  constitution  political  rights,  whom  the 
legislation  of  the  English  kings  had  forced  to  attacli  himself 
to  a  lord  on  pain  of  outlawry,  and  who  served  as  household 
servant  or  as  hired  laborer,  or  at  the  best  as  rent-paying 
tenant  of  land  which  was  not  his  own.  The  Norman  knight 
or  lawyer  however  saw  little  distinction  between  these  classes  ; 
and  the  tendency  of  legislation  under  the  Angevins  was  to  blend 
all  in  a  single  class  of  serfs.  While  the  pure  "theow"  or 
absolute  slave  disappeared,  therefore,  the  ceorlor  villein  sank 
lower  in  the  social  scale.  But  though  the  rural  population 
was  undoubtedly  thrown  more  together  and  fused  into  a  more 
homogeneous  class,  its  actual  position  corresponded  very  imper- 
fectly with  the  view  of  the  lawyers.  All  indeed  were  depend- 
ents on  a  lord.  The  manor-house  became  the  center  of  every 
English  village.  The  manor-court  was  held  in  its  hall ;  it 
was  here  that  the  lord  or  his  steward  received  homage,  re- 
covered fines,  held  the  view  of  frank-pledge,  or  enrolled  the 
villagers  in  their  tithing.  Here,  too,  if  the  lord  possessed 
criminal  jurisdiction,  was  held  his  justice  court,  and  without 
its  doors  stood  his  gallows.  Around  it  lay  the  demesne  or 
home-farm,  and  the  cultivation  of  this  rested  wholly  with 
the  "villeins"  of  the  manor.  It  was  by  them  that  the  great 
barn  of  the  lord  was  filled  with  sheaves,  his  sheep  shorn,  his 
grain  malted,  the  wood  hewn  for  his  hall  fire.  These  serv- 
ices were  the  labor-rent  by  which  they  held  their  lands,  and 
it  was  the  nature  and  extent  of  this  labor-rent  which  parted 
one  class  of  the  population  from  another.  The  "  villein/'  in 
the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  was  bound  only  to  gather  in  his 
lord's  harvest  and  to  aid  in  the  plowing  and  sowing  of 
autumn  and  Lent.  The  cottar,  the  bordar  and  the  laborer 
were  bound  to  help  in  the  work  of  the  home-farm  throughout 
the  year.  But  these  services  and  the  time  of  rendering  them 
were  strictly  limited  by  custom,  not  only  in  the  case  of  the 
ceorl  or  villein,  but  in  that  of  the  originally  meaner  "land- 
less man/'  The  possession  of  his  little  homestead  with  the 
ground  around  it,  the  privilege  of  turning  out  his  cattle  on  the 
waste  of  the  manor,  passed  quietly  and  insensibly  from  mere 


312  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

indulgences  that  could  be  granted  or  withdrawn  at  a  lord's 
caprice  into  rights  that  could  be  pleaded  at  law.  The  num- 
ber of  teams,  the  fines,  the  reliefs,  the  services  that  a  lord 
could  claim,  at  first  mere  matter  of  oral  tradition,  came  to  be 
entered  on  the  court-roll  of  the  manor,  a  copy  of  which  be- 
came the  title-deed  of  the  villein.  It  was  to  this  that  he 
owed  the  name  of  "  copy-holder  "  which  at  a  later  time  super- 
seded his  older  title.  Disputes  were  settled  by  a  reference 
to  this  roll  or  an  oral  evidence  of  the  custom  at  issue,  but  a 
social  arrangement  which  was  eminently  characteristic  of  the 
English  spirit  of  compromise  generally  secured  a  fair  adjust- 
ment of  the  claims  of  villein  and  lord.  It  was  the  duty  of 
the  lord's  bailiff  to  exact  due  services  from  the  villeins, 
but  his  coadjutor  in  this  office,  the  reeve  or  foreman  of 
the  manor,  was  chosen  by  the  tenants  themselves  and  acted 
as  representatives  of  their  interests  and  rights. 

The  first  disturbance  of  the  system  of  tenure  which  we  have 
described  sprang  from  the  introduction  of  leases.  The  lord 
The  Farmer  °^  ^ie  m^nor,  instead  of  cultivating  the  demesne 
and  the  through  his  own  bailiff,  often  found  it  more  con- 
Laborer,  yenient  and  profitable  to  let  the  manor  to  a  tenant 
at  a  given  rent,  payable  either  in  money  or  in  kind.  Thus 
we  find  the  manor  of  Sand  on  leased  by  the  Chapter  of  St. 
Paul's  at  a  very  early  period  on  a  rent  which  comprised  the 
payment  of  grain  both  for  bread  and  ale,  of  alms  to  be  dis- 
tributed at  the  cathedral  door,  of  wood  to  be  used  in  its  bake- 
house and  brewery,  and  of  money  to  be  spent  in  wages.  It 
is  to  this  system  of  leasing,  or  rather  to  the  usual  term  for  the 
rent  it  entailed  (feorm,  from  the  Latin  firma],  that  we  owe 
the  words,  "farm"  and  "farmer,"  the  growing  use  of  which 
marks  the  first  step  in  the  rural  revolution  which  we  are  ex- 
amining. It  was  a  revolution  which  made  little  direct  change 
in  the  manorial  system,  but  its  indirect  effect  in  breaking  the 
tie  on  which  the  feudal  organization  of  the  manor  rested,  that 
of  the  tenant's  personal  dependence  on  his  lord,  and  in  afford- 
ing an  opportunity  by  which  the  wealthier  among  the  tenan- 
try could  rise  to  a  position  of  apparent  equality  with  their 
older  masters  and  form  a  new  class  intermediate  between  the 
larger  proprietors  and  the  customary  tenants,  was  of  the 
highest  importance.  This  earlier  step,  however,  in  the  modi- 
fication of  the  manorial  system,  by  the  rise  of  the  Farmer- 


THE   PEASANT   KEVOLT.      1377    TO   1381.  313 

class,  was  soon  followed  by  one  of  afar  more  serious  character 
in  the  rise  of  the  Free  Laborer.  Labor,  whatever  right  it 
might  have  attained  in  other  ways,  was  as  yet  in  the  strictest 
sense  bound  to  the  soil.  Neither  villein  nor  serf  had  any 
choice,  either  of  a  master  or  of  a  sphere  of  toil.  He  was 
born,  in  fact,  to  his  holding  and  to  his  lord  ;  he  paid  head- 
money  for  license  to  remove  from  the  estate  in  search  of  trade 
or  hire,  and  a  refusal  to  return  on  recall  by  his  owner  would 
have  ended  in  his  pursuit  as  a  fugitive  outlaw.  But  the  ad- 
vance of  society  and  the  natural  increase  of  population  had 
for  a  long  time  been  silently  freeing  the  laborer  from  this 
local  bondage.  The  influence  of  the  Church  had  been  exerted 
in  promoting  emancipation,  as  a  work  of  piety,  on  all  estates 
but  its  own.  The  fugitive  bondsman  found  freedom  in  a 
flight  to  chartered  towns,  where  a  residence  during  a  year 
and  a  day  conferred  franchise.  Afresh  step  towards  freedom 
was  made  by  the  growing  tendency  to  commute  labor-services 
for  money-payments.  The  population  was  slowly  increasing, 
and  as  the  law  of  gavel-kind  which  was  applicable  to  all 
landed  estates  not  held  by  military  tenure  divided  the  inheri- 
tance of  the  tenantry  equally  among  their  sons,  the  holding 
of  each  tenant  and  the  services  due  from  it  became  divided 
in  a  corresponding  degree.  A  labor-rent  thus  became  more 
difficult  to  enforce,  while  the  increase  of  wealth  among  the 
tenantry,  and  the  rise  of  a  new  spirit  of  independence,  made 
it  more  burdensome  to  those  who  rendered  it.  It  was  prob- 
ably from  this  cause  that  the  commutation  of  the  arrears  of 
labor  for  a  money  payment,  which  had  long  prevailed  on 
every  estate,  gradually  developed  into  a  general  commutation 
of  services.  We  have  already  witnessed  the  silent  progress 
of  this  remarkable  change  in  the  case  of  St.  Edmundsbury, 
but  the  practise  soon  became  universal,  and  ''malt-silver/' 
"  wood-silver,"  and  "  larder-silver,"  gradually  took  the  place 
of  the  older  personal  services  on  the  court-rolls.  The  process 
of  commutation  was  hastened  by  the  necessities  of  the  lords 
themselves.  The  luxury  of  the  castle-hall,  the  splendor  and 
pomp  of  chivalry,  the  cost  of  campaigns,  drained  the  purses 
of  knight  and  baron,  and  the  sale  of  freedom  to  a  serf  or 
exemption  from  services  to  a  villein  afforded  an  easy  and  tempt- 
ing mode  of  refilling  them.  In  this  process  even  kings  took 
part.  Kihvard  the  Third  sent  commissioners  to  royal  estates 


314  HISTORY    OF    THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

for  the  especial  purpose  of  selling  manumissions  to  the  king's 
serfs  ;  and  we  still  possess  the  names  of  those  who  were  en- 
franchised with  their  families  by  a  payment  of  hard  cash  in 
aid  of  the  exhausted  exchequer. 

By  this  entire  detachment  of  the  serf  from  actual  depend- 
ence on  the  land,  the  manorial  system  was  even  more  radi- 
cally changed  than  by  the  rise  of  the  serf  into  a 
Death  copyn°lder.  The  whole  social  condition  of  the 
country,  in  fact,  was  modified  by  the  appearance 
of  a  new  class.  The  rise  of  the  free  laborer  had  followed 
that  of  the  farmer,  labor  was  no  longer  bound  to  one  spot  or 
one  master  :  it  was  free  to  hire  itself  to  what  employer,  and 
to  choose  what  field  of  employment  it  would.  At  the  mo- 
ment we  have  reached,  in  fact,  the  lord  of  a  manor  had  been 
reduced  over  a  large  part  of  England  to  the  position  of  a 
modern  landlord,  receiving  a  rental  in  money  from  his  ten- 
ants, and  dependent  for  the  cultivation  of  his  own  demesne 
on  paid  laborers.  But  a  formidable  difficulty  now  met  the 
landowners  who  had  been  driven  by  the  process  of  enfran- 
chisement to  rely  on  hired  labor.  Hitherto  this  supply  had 
been  abundant  and  cheap  ;  but  this  abundance  suddenly 
disappeared.  The  most  terrible  plague  which  the  world  ever 
witnessed  advanced  at  this  juncture  from  the  East,  and  after 
devastating  Europe  from  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  to 
the  Baltic,  swooped  at  the  close  of  1348  upon  Britain.  The 
traditions  of  its  destructiveness,  and  the  panic-struck  words 
of  the  statutes  which  followed  it,  have  been  more  than  justi- 
fied by  modern  research.  Of  the  three  or  four  millions  who 
then  formed  the  population  of  England,  more  than  one-half 
were  swept  away  in  its  repeated  visitations.  Its  ravages  were 
fiercest  in  the  greater  towns,  where  filthy  and  undrained 
streets  afforded  a  constant  haunt  to  leprosy  and  fever.  In 
the  burial-ground  which  the  piety  of  Sir  Walter  Maunay 
purchased  for  the  citizens  of  London,  a  spot  whose  site  was 
afterwards  marked  by  the  Charter  House,  more  than  fifty 
thousand  corpses  are  said  to  have  been  interred.  Thousands 
of  people  perished  at  Norwich,  while  in  Bristol  the  living 
were  hardly  able  to  bury  the  dead.  But  the  Black  Death 
fell  on  the  villages  almost  as  fiercely  as  on  the  towns.  More 
than  one-half  of  the  priests  of  Yorkshire  are  known  to  have 
perished  ;  in  the  diocese  of  Norwich  two-thirds  of  the  parishes 


THE   PEASANT    REVOLT.      1377   TO    1381.  315 

changed  their  incumbents--  The  whole  organization  of  labor 
was  thrown  out  of  gear.  The  scarcity  of  hands  made  it  dif- 
ficult for  the  minor  tenants  to  perform  the  services  due  for 
their  lauds,  and  only  a  temporary  abandonment  of  half  the 
rent  by  the  landowners  induced  the  farmers  to  refrain  from 
the  abandonment  of  their  farms.  For  a  time  cultivation  be- 
came impossible.  "  The  sheep  and  cattle  strayed  through 
the  fields  and  corn/'  says  a  contemporary,  "  and  there  were 
none  left  who  could  drive  them."  Even  when  the  first  burst 
of  panic  was  over,  the  sudden  rise  of  wages  consequent  on 
the  enormous  diminution  in  the  supply  of  free  labor,  though 
accompanied  by  a  corresponding  rise  in  the  price  of  food, 
rudely  disturbed  the  course  of  industrial  employments ; 
harvests  rotted  on  the  ground,  and  fields  were  left  untilled, 
not  merely  from  scarcity  of  hands,  but  from  the  strife  which 
now  for  the  first  time  revealed  itself  between  capital  and 
labor. 

While  the  landowners  of  the  country  and  the  wealthier 
craftsmen  of  the  town  were  threatened  with  ruin  by  what 
seemed  to  their  age  the  extravagant  demands  of  j^  stat_ 
the  new  labor  class,  the  country  itself  was  torn  ntes  of 
with  riot  and  disorder.  The  outbreak  of  lawless  laborers, 
self-indulgence  which  followed  everywhere  in  the  wake  of  the 
plague  told  especially  upon  the  "  landless  men,"  wandering 
in  search  of  work,  and  for  the  first  time  masters  of  the  labor 
market  ;  and  the  wandering  laborer  or  artizan  turned  easily 
into  the  "sturdy  beggar,"  or  the  bandit  of  the  woods.  A 
summary  redress  for  these  evils  was  at  once  provided  by  the 
Crown  in  a  royal  ordinance  which  was  subsequently  embodied 
in  the  Statutes  of  Laborers.  "  Every  man  or  woman,"  runs 
this  famous  provision,  "  of  whatsoever  condition,  free  or 
bond,  able  in  body,  and  within  the  age  of  threescore  years, 
.  .  .  and  not  having  of  his  own  whereof  he  may  live,  nor 
land  of  his  own  about  the  tillage  of  which  he  may  occupy 
himself,  and  not  serving  any  other,  shall  be  bound  to  serve 
the  employer  who  shall  require  him  to  do  so,  and  shall  take 
only  the  wages  which  were  accustomed  to  be  taken  in  the 
neighborhood  where  he  is  bound  to  serve  "  two  years  before 
the  plague  began.  A  refusal  to  obey  was  punished  by  im- 
prisonment. But  sterner  measures  were  soon  found  to  be 
necessary.  Not  only  was  the  price  of  labor  fixed  by  Parlia- 


316  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ment  in  the  Statute  of  1351,  but  the  labor  class  was  once 
more  Lied  to  the  soil.  The  laborer  was  forbidden  to  quit  the 
parish  where  he  lived  in  search  of  better-paid  employment  ; 
if  he  disobeyed  he  became  a  "  fugitive,"  and  subject  to  im- 
prisonment at  the  hands  of  the  justices  of  the  peace.  To 
enforce  such  a  law  literally  must  have  been  impossible,  for 
corn  had  risen  to  so  high  a  price  that  a  day's  labor  at  the  old 
wages  would  not  have  purchased  wheat  enough  for  a  man's 
support.  But  the  landowners  did  not  flinch  from  the  attempt. 
The  repeated  re-enactment  of  the  law  shows  the  difficulty  of 
applying  it,  and  the  stubbornness  of  the  struggle  which  it 
brought  about.  The  fines  and  forfeitures  which  were  levied 
for  infractions  of  its  provisions  formed  a  large  source  of  royal 
revenue,  but  so  ineffectual  were  the  original  penalties  that 
the  runaway  laborer  was  at  last  ordered  to  be  branded  with 
a  hot  iron  on  the  forehead,  while  the  harboring  of  serfs  in 
towns  was  vigorously  put  down.  Nor  was  it  merely  the  ex- 
isting class  of  free  laborers  which  was  attacked  by  this  reac- 
tionary movement.  The  increase  of  their  numbers  by  a  com- 
mutation of  labor  services  for  money  payments  was  suddenly 
checked,  and  the  ingenuity  of  the  lawyers  who  were  employed 
as  stewards  of  each  manor  was  exercised  in  striving  to  restore 
to  the  landowners  that  customary  labor  whose  loss  was  now 
severely  felt.  Manumissions  and  exemptions  which  had 
passed  without  question  were  canceled  on  grounds  of  infor- 
mality, and  labor  services  from  which  they  held  themselves 
freed  by  redemption  were  again  demanded  from  the  villeins. 
The  attempt  was  the  more  galling  that  the  cause  had  to  be 
pleaded  in  the  manor-court  itself,  and  to  be  decided  by  the 
very  officer  whose  interest  it  was  to  give  judgment  in  favor 
of  his  lord.  We  can  see  the  growth  of  a  fierce  spirit  of  re- 
sistance through  the  statutes  which  strove  in  vain  to  repress 
it.  In  the  towns,  where  the  system  of  forced  labor  was 
applied  with  even  more  rigor  than  in  the  country,  strikes  and 
combinations  became  frequent  among  the  lower  craftsmen. 
In  the  country  the  free  laborers  found  allies  in  the  villeins 
whose  freedom  from  manorial  service  was  questioned.  These 
were  often  men  of  position  and  substance,  and  throughout 
the  eastern  counties  the  gatherings  of  "  fugitive  serfs"  were 
supported  by  an  organized  resistance  and  by  large  contri- 
butions of  money  on  the  part  of  the  wealthier  tenantry.  A 


THE   PEASANT   KEVOLT.      1377   TO   1381.  317 

statute  of  later  date  throws  light  on  their  resistance.  It  tells 
us  that  "  villeins  and  holders  of  lands  in  villeinage  withdrew 
their  customs  and  services  from  their  lords,  having  attached 
themselves  to  other  persons  who  maintained  and  abetted 
them  ;  and  who,  under  color  of  exemplifications  from  Domes- 
day of  the  manors  and  villages  where  they  dwelt,  claimed  to 
be  quit  of  all  manner  of  services,  either  of  their  body  or  of 
their  lands,  and  would  suffer  no  distress  or  other  course  of 
justice  to  be  taken  against  them  ;  the  villeins  aiding  their 
maintainers  by  threatening  the  officers  of  their  lords  with 
peril  to  life  and  lirnb,  as  well  by  open  assemblies  as  by  con- 
federacies to  support  each  other."  It  would  seem  not  only 
as  if  the  villein  was  striving  to  resist  the  reactionary  tendency 
of  the  lords  of  manors  to  regain  his  labor  service,  but  that 
in  the  general  overturning  of  social  institutions  the  copy- 
holder was  struggling  to  become  a  freeholder,  and  the  farmer 
to  be  recognized  as  proprietor  of  the  demesne  he  held  on  lease. 
A  more  terrible  outcome  of  the  general  suffering  was  seen 
in  a  new  revolt  against  the  whole  system  of  social  inequality 
which  had  till  then  passed  unquestioned  as  the 
divine  order  of  the  world.  The  cry  of  the  poor  John  Ball, 
found  a  terrible  utterance  in  the  words  of  "  a  mad 
priest  of  Kent,"  as  the  courtly  Froissart  calls  him,  who  for 
twenty  years  found  audience  for  his  sermons,  in  defiance  of 
interdict  and  imprisonment,  in  the  stout  yeomen  who  gathered 
in  the  Kentish  churchyards.  "  Mad "  as  the  landowners 
called  him,  it  was  in  the  preaching  of  John  Ball  that  England 
first  listened  to  a  declaration  of  natural  equality  and  the  rights 
of  man.  "Good  people/'  cried  the  preacher,  "things  will 
never  go  well  in  England  so  long  as  goods  be  not  in  common, 
and  so  long  as  there  be  villeins  and  gentlemen.  By  what 
right  are  they  whom  we  call  lords  greater  folk  than  we  ?  On 
what  grounds  have  they  deserved  it  ?  Why  do  they  hold  us 
in  serfage  ?  If  we  all  came  of  the  same  father  and  mother, 
of  Adam  and  Eve,  how  can  they  say  or  prove  that  they  are 
better  than  we,  if  it  be  not  that  they  make  us  gain  for  them 
by  our  toil  what  they  spend  in  their  pride  ?  They  are  clothed 
in  velvet,  and  warm  in  their  furs  and  their  ermines,  while 
we  are  covered  with  rags.  They  have  wine  and  spices  and 
fair  bread  ;  and  we  oat-cake  and  straw,  and  water  to  drink. 
They  have  leisure  and  fine  houses  ;  we  have  pain  and  labor, 


818  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  rain  and  the  wind  in  the  fields.  And  yet  it  is  of  us  and 
of  our  toil  that  these  men  hold  their  state/'  It  was  the 
tyranny  of  property  that  then  as  ever  roused  the  defiance  of 
socialism.  A  spirit  fatal  to  the  whole  system  of  the  Middle 
Ages  breathed  in  the  popular  rhyme  which  condensed  the 
leveling  doctrine  of  John  Ball  :  "  When  Adam  delved  and 
Eve  span,  who  was  then  the  gentleman  ?  " 

The  rhyme  was  running  from  lip  to  lip  when  a  fresh  instance 
of  public  oppression  fanned  the  smoldering  discontent  into 
The  a  flame.  Edward  the  Third  died  in  a  dishonored 
Peasant  old  age,  robbed  on  his  death-bed  even  of  his  finger- 
Rising.  rings  by  the  vile  mistress  to  whom  he  had  clung  ; 
and  the  accession  of  the  child  of  the  Black  Prince,  Eichard 
the  Second,  revived  the  hopes  of  what  in  a  political  sense  we 
must  still  call  the  popular  party  in  the  Legislature.  The 
Parliament  of  1377  took  up  the  work  of  reform,  and  boldly 
assumed  the  control  of  a  new  subsidy  by  assigning  two  of 
their  number  to  regulate  its  expenditure  :  that  of  1378  de- 
manded and  obtained  an  account  of  the  mode  in  which  the 
subsidy  had  been  spent.  But  the  real  strength  of  Parliament 
was  directed,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the  desperate  struggle  in 
which  the  proprietary  classes,  whom  they  exclusively  repre- 
sented, were  striving  to  reduce  the  laborer  into  a  fresh  serf- 
age. Meanwhile  the  shame  of  defeat  abroad  was  added  to  the 
misery  and  discord  at  home.  The  French  war  ran  its  dis- 
astrous course  :  one  English  fleet  was  beaten  by  the  Spaniards, 
a  second  sunk  by  a  storm ;  and  a  campaign  in  the  heart  of 
France  ended,  like  its  predecessors,  in  disappointment  and 
ruin.  It  was  to  defray  the  heavy  expenses  of  the  war  that 
the  Parliament  of  1380  renewed  a  grant  made  three  years 
before,  to  be  raised  by  means  of  a  poll-tax  on  every  person  in 
the  realm.  The  tax  brought  under  contribution  a  class 
which  had  hitherto  escaped,  men  such  as  the  laborer,  the 
village  smith,  the  village  tiler  ;  it  goaded  into  action  pre- 
cisely the  class  which  was  already  seething  with  discontent, 
and  its  exaction  set  England  on  fire  from  sea  to  sea.  As 
spring  went  on  quaint  rhymes  passed  through  the  country, 
and  served  as  summons  to  the  revolt  which  soon  extended 
from  the  eastern  and  midland  counties  over  all  England 
south  of  the  Thames.  "  John  Ball,"  ran  one,  "greeteth  you 
all,  and  doth  for  to  understand  ho  hath  rung  your  bell. 


THE  PEASANT    REVOLT.      1377   TO   1381.  319 

Now  right  and  might,  will  and  skill,  God  speed  every  dele." 
"Help  truth,"  ran  another,  "and  truth  shall  help  you! 
Now  reigneth  pride  in  price,  and  covetise  is  counted  wise, 
and  lechery  withouten  shame,  and  gluttony  withouten  blame. 
Envy  reigneth  with  treason,  and  sloth  is  take  in  great  season. 
God  do  bote,  for  now  is  tyme  ! "  We  recognize  Ball's  hand 
in  the  yet  more  stirring  missives  of  "  Jack  the  Miller  "  and 
"Jack  the  Carter."  "Jack  Miller  asketh  help  to  turn  his 
mill  aright.  He  hath  gronnden  small,  small  :  the  King's 
Son  of  Heaven  he  shall  pay  for  all.  Look  thy  mill  go  aright 
with  the  four  sailes,  and  the  post  stand  with  steadfastness. 
With  right  and  with  might,  with  skill  and  with  will ;  let 
might  help  right,  and  skill  go  before  will,  and  right  before 
might,  so  goeth  our  mill  aright."  "  Jack  Carter,"  ran  the 
companion  missive,  ''prays  you  all  that  ye  make  a  good  end 
of  that  ye  have  begun,  and  do  well,  and  aye  better  and  better  : 
for  at  the  even  men  heareth  the  day."  "  Falseness  and 
Guile,"  sang  Jack  Trewman,  "  have  reigned  too  long,  and 
truth  hath  been  set  under  a  lock,  and  falseness  and  guile 
reigneth  in  every  stock.  No  man  may  come  truth  to,  but  if 
he  sing  '  si  dedero.'  True  love  is  away  that  was  so  good,  and 
clerks  for  wealth  work  them  woe.  God  do  bote,  for  now  is 
tyme."  In  the  rude  jingle  of  these  lines  began  for  England 
the  literature  of,  political  controversy  :  they  are  the  first  pre- 
decessors of  the  pamphlets  of  Milton  and  of  Burke.  Eough  as 
they  are,  they  express  clearly  enough  the  mingled  passions 
which  met  in  the  revolt  of  the  peasants  :  their  longing  for  a 
right  rule,  for  plain  and  simple  justice;  their  scorn  of  the 
immorality  of  the  nobles  and  the  infamy  of  the  court ;  their 
resentment  at  the  perversion  of  the  law  to  the  cause  of  op- 
pression. The  revolt  spread  like  wildfire  over  the  country  ; 
Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  Cambridge  and  Hertfordshire  rose  in 
arms  ;  from  Sussex  and  Surrey  the  insurrection  extended 
as  far  as  Devon.  But  the  actual  outbreak  began  in  Kent, 
where  a  tiler  killed  a  tax-collector  in  vengeance  for  an  outrage 
on  his  daughter.  The  county  rose  in  arms.  Canterbury, 
where  "  the  whole  town  was  of  their  mind,"  threw  open  its 
gates  to  the  insurgents,  who  plundered  the  Archbishop's 
palace  and  dragged  John  Ball  from  its  prison,  while  a 
hundred  thousand  Kentish-men  gathered  round  Wat  Tyler 
of  Essex  and  John  Hales  of  Mailing.  In  the  eastern  counties 


320  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  levy  of  the  poll-tax  had  already  gathered  crowds  of 
peasants  together,  armed  with  clubs,  rusty  swords,  and  bows, 
and  the  royal  commissioners  sent  to  repress  the  tumult  were 
driven  from  the  field.  While  the  Essex-men  marched  upon 
London  on  one  side  of  the  river,  the  Kentish-men  inarched 
on  the  other.  Their  grievance  was  mainly  political,  for 
villeinage  was  unknown  in  Kent ;  but  as  they  poured  on  to 
Blackheath,  every  lawyer  who  fell  into  their  hands  was  put 
to  death;  "not  till  all  these  were  killed  would  the  land 
enjoy  its  old  freedom  again,"  the  peasants  shouted  as  they 
fired  the  houses  of  the  stewards  and  flung  the  records  of  the 
manor-courts  into  the  flames.  The  whole  population  joined 
them  as  they  marched  along,  while  the  nobles  were  paralyzed 
with  fear.  The  young  king — he  was  but  a  boy  of  fifteen — 
addressed  them  from  a  boat  on  the  river ;  but  the  refusal  of 
his  Council  under  the  guidance  of  Archbishop  Sudbury  to 
allow  him  to  land  kindled  the  peasants  to  fury,  and  with 
cries  of  "Treason"  the  great  mass  rushed  on  London.  Its 
gates  were  flung  open  by  the  poorer  artizans  within  the  city, 
and  the  stately  palace  of  John  of  Gaunt  at  the  Savoy,  the 
new  inn  of  the  lawyers  at  the  Temple,  the  houses  of  the 
foreign  merchants,  were  soon  in  a  blaze.  But  the  insurgents, 
as  they  proudly  boasted,  were  "seekers  of  truth  and  justice, 
not  thieves  or  robbers,"  and  a  plunderer  found  carrying  off 
a  silver  vessel  from  the  sack  of  the  Savoy  was  flung  with  his 
spoil  into  the  flames.  The  general  terror  was  shown  lu- 
dicrously enough  on  the  following  day,  when  a  daring  band 
of  peasants,  under  Tyler  himself,  forced  their  way  into  the 
Tower,  and  taking  the  panic-stricken  knights  of  the  royal 
household  in  rough  horse-play  by  the  beard,  promised  to  be 
their  equals  and  good  comrades  in  the  time  to  come.  But 
the  horse-play  changed  into  dreadful  earnest  when  they 
found  the  king  had  escaped  their  grasp,  and  when  Arch- 
bishop Sudbury  and  the  Prior  of  St.  John  were  discovered 
in  the  chapel ;  the  primate  was  dragged  from  his  sanctuary 
and  beheaded,  and  the  same  vengeance  was  wreaked  on  the 
Treasurer  and  the  Chief  Commissioner  for  the  levy  of  the 
hated  poll-tax.  Meanwhile  the  king  had  ridden  from  the 
Tower  to  meet  the  mass  of  the  Essex-men,  who  had  en- 
.  camped  without  the  city  at  Mile-end,  while  the  men  of  Hert- 
fordshire and  St.  Albans  occupied  Highbury.  "  I  am  your 


THE  PEASANT  REVOLT.   1377  TO  1381.     321 

king  and  lord,  good  people,"  the  boy  began  with  a  fearless- 
ness which  marked  his  bearing  throughout  the  crisis  ;  "  what 
will  ye  ?"  "  We  will  that  you  free  us  for  ever,"  shouted  the 
peasants,  "  us  and  our  lands  ;  and  that  we  be  never  named 
nor  held  for  serfs."  "  I  grant  it,"  replied  Richard  ;  and  he 
bade  them  go  home,  pledging  himself  at  once  to  issue  charters 
of  freedom  and  amnesty.  A  shout  of  joy  welcomed  the 
promi?3.  Throughout  the  day  more  than  thirty  clerks  were 
busied  writing  letters  of  pardon  and  emancipation,  and  with 
these  the  mass  of  the  Essex  and  Hertfordshire  men  withdrew 
quietly  to  their  homes.  It  was  with  such  a  charter  that 
William  Grindecobbe  returned  to  St.  Albans,  and  breaking 
at  the  head  of  the  burghers  into  the  abbey  precincts,  sum- 
moned the  abbot  to  deliver  up  the  charters  which  bound  the 
town  in  bondage  to  his  house.  But  a  more  striking  proof  of 
servitude  remained  in  the  millstones,  which  after  a  long  suit 
at  law  had  been  adjudged  to  the  abbey,  and  placed  within 
its  cloister  as  a  triumphant  witness  that  no  townsman  might 
grind  corn  within  the  domain  of  the  abbey  save  at  the  abbot's 
will.  Bursting  into  the  cloister  the  burghers  now  tore  the 
millstones  from  the  floor,  and  broke  them  into  small  pieces, 
"  like  blessed  bread  in  church,"  so  that  each  might  have 
something  to  show  of  the  day  when  their  freedom  was  won 
again. 

Many  of  the  Kentish-men  dispersed  at  the  news  of  the 
king's  pledge  to  the  men  of  Essex,  but  thirty  thousand  men 
still  surrounded  Wat  Tyler  when  Richard  by  a  suppression 
mere  chance  encountered  him  the  next  morning  of  the 
at  Srnithfield.  Hot  words  passed  between  his  Revolt, 
train  and  the  peasant  leader,  who  advanced  to  confer  with 
the  king  ;  and  a  threat  from  Tyler  brought  on  a  brief 
struggle  in  which  the  Mayor  of  London,  William  Wai- 
worth,  struck  him  with  his  dagger  to  the  ground.  "  Kill, 
kill,"  shouted  the  crowd,  "they  have  slain  our  captain." 
"  What  need  ye,  my  masters  ?  "  cried  the  boy-king,  as  he 
rode  boldly  to  the  front,  "I  am  your  captain  and  your 
king  !  Follow  me."  The  hopes  of  the  peasants  centered  in 
the  young  sovereign  :  one  aim  of  their  rising  had  been  to  free 
him  from  the  evil  counselors  who,  as  they  believed,  abused 
his  youth,  and  they  now  followed  him  with  a  touching  loy- 
alty and  trust  till  he  entered  the  Tower.  His  mother  wel- 


822  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

corned  him  with  tears  of  joy.  "  Rejoice  and  praise  God," 
the  boy  answered,  "  for  I  have  recovered  to-day  my  heritage 
which  was  lost,  and  the  realm  of  England. "  But  he  was 
compelled  to  give  the  same  pledge  of  freedom  as  at  Mile-end, 
and  it  was  only  after  receiving  his  letters  of  pardon  and 
emancipation  that  the  Kentish-men  dispersed  to  their  homes. 
The  revolt,  indeed,  was  far  from  heing  at  an  end.  South  of 
the  Thames  it  spread  as  far  as  Devonshire  ;  there  were  out- 
breaks in  the  north  ;  the  eastern  counties  were  in  one  wild 
turmoil  of  revolt.  A  body  of  peasants  occupied  St.  Albans. 
A  maddened  crowd  forced  the  gates  of  St.  Edmundsbury 
and  wrested, from  the  trembling  monks  pledges  for  the  con- 
firmation of  the  liberties  of  the  town.  John  the  Litster,  a 
dyer  of  Norwich,  headed  a  mass  of  peasants  under  the  title 
of  King  of  the  Commons,  and  compelled  the  nobles  he  cap- 
tured to  act  as  his  meat-tasters  and  to  serve  him  on  their 
knees  during  his  repast.  But  the  withdrawal  of  the  peasant 
armies  with  their  letters  of  emancipation  gave  courage  to  the 
nobles.  The  warlike  Bishop  of  Norwich  fell  lance  in  hand 
on  Litster's  carnp,  and  scattered  the  peasants  of  Norfolk  at 
the  first  shock  :  while  the  king,  with  an  army  of  40,000  men, 
spread  terror  by  the  ruthles-sness  of  his  executions  as  he 
marched  in  triumph  through  Kent  and  Essex.  At  Waltham 
he  was  met  by  the  display  of  his  own  recent  charters  and  a 
protest  from  the  Essex-men  that  "  they  were  so  far  as  free- 
dom went  the  peers  of  their  lords."  But  they  were  to  learn 
the  worth  of  a  king's  word.  "  Villeins  you  were,"  answered 
Richard,  and  villeins  you  are.  In  bondage  you  shall  abide,  and 
that  not  your  old  bondage,  but  a  worse-!  "  But  the  stubborn 
resistance  which  he  met  showed  the  temper  of  the  people. 
The  villagers  of  Billericay  threw  themselves  into  the  woods 
and  fought  two  hard  fights  before  they  were  reduced  to  sub- 
mission. It  was  only  by  threats  of  death  that  verdicts  of 
guilty  could  be  wrung  from  the  Essex  jurors  when  the  leaders 
of  the  revolt  were  brought  before  them.  Grindecobbe  was 
offered  his  life  if  he  would  persuade  his  followers  at  St. 
Albans  to  restore  the  charters  .they  had  wrung  from  the  monks. 
He  turned  bravely  to  his  fellow-townsmen  and  bade  them 
take  no  thought  for  his  trouble.  "If  I  die/'  he  said,  "I 
shall  die  for  the  cause  of  the  freedom  we  have  won,  count- 
ing myself  happy  to  end  my  life  by  such  a  martyrdom. 


RICHARD   THE   SECOND.      1381    TO    1399.  323 

Do  then  to-day  as  you  would  have  done  had  I  been  killed 
yesterday."  But  the  stubborn  will  of  the  conquered  was  met 
by  as  stubborn  a  will  in  their  conquerors.  Through  the  sum- 
mer and  autumn  seven  thousand  men  are  said  to  have  perished 
on  the  gallows  or  the  field.  The  royal  council  indeed  showed 
its  sense  of  the  danger  of  a  mere  policy  of  resistance  by  sub- 
mitting the  question  of  enfranchisement  to  the  Parliament 
which  assembled  on  the  suppression  of  the  revolt,  with  words 
which  suggested  a  compromise.  "  If  you  desire  to  enfranchise 
and  set  at  liberty  the  said  serfs,"  ran  the  royal  message,  "  by 
your  common  assent,  as  the  king  has  been  informed  that  some 
of  you  desire,  he  will  consent  to  your  prayer. "  But  no  thoughts 
of  compromise  influenced  the  landowners  in  their  reply.  The 
king's  grant  and  letters,  the  Parliament  answered  with  perfect 
truth,  were  legally  null  and  void  :  their  serfs  were  their  goods, 
and  the  king  could  not  take  their  goods  from  them  but  by 
their  own  consent.  "And  this  consent,"  they  ended,  "  we 
have  never  given  and  never  will  give  were  we  all  to  die  in  one 
day. 

Section  V.— Richard  the  Second.    1381—1399. 

[Authorities.—  The  "  Annales  Ricardi  Secundi  et  Henrici  Quarti,"  published  by 
the  Master  of  the  Rolls,  are  our  main  authority.  Th«y  form  the  basis  of  the  St. 
Albans  compilation  which  bears  the  name  of  Walsingham,  and  from  which  the 
Life  of  Richard  by  a  monk  of  Evesham  is  for  the  most  part  derived.  The  same 
violent  Lancastrian  sympathy  runs  through  Walsingham  and  the  fifth  book  of 
Knyghton's  Chronicle.  The  French  authorities,  on  the  other  hand,  are  vehe- 
mently on  Richard's  side.  Froissart,  who  ends  at  this  time,  is  supplemented  by 
the  metrical  history  of  Creton  ("  Archaeologia,"  vol.  xx.)  and  the  "Chronique  de 
la  Traison  et  Mort  de  Richart"  (English  Historical  Society),  both  the  works  of 
French  authors,  and  published  in  France  in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Fourth,  prob- 
ably with  the  aim  of  arousing  French  feeling  against  the  House  of  Lancaster  and 
the  war-policy  it  had  revived.  The  popular  feeling  in  England  may  be  seen  in 
"  Political  Songs  from  Edward  III.  to  Richard  III."  (Rolls  Series).  The  "  Foedera  " 
and  Rolls  of  Parliament  are  indispensable  for  this  period  :  its  constitutional  im- 
portance has  been  ably  illustrated  by  Mr.  Hallam  ("Middle  Ages").  William 
Longland's  poem,  the  "Complaint  of  Piers  the  Plowman"  (edited  by  Mr.  Skeat 
for  the  Early  English  Text  Society),  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  the  social  condition 
of  England  at  the  time  :  a  poem  on  "  The  Deposition  of  Richard  II.,"  which  has 
been  published  by  the  Camden  Society,  is  now  ascribed  to  the  same  author.  The 
best  modern  work  on  Richard  II.  is  that  of  M.  Wallon  ("  Richard  II."  Paris,  1864).] 

All  the  darker  and  sterner  aspects  of  the  age  which  we 
have  been  viewing,  its  social  revolt,  its  moral  and  religious 
awakening,  the  misery  of  the  poor,  the  protest 
of  the  Lollard,  are  painted  with  a  terrible  fidelity 
in  the  poem  of  William  Longland.  Nothing 


324  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

brings  more  vividly  home  to  us  the  social  chasm  which 
in  the  fourteenth  century  severed  the  rich  from  the 
poor  than  the  contrast  between  the  "Complaint  of  Piers 
the  Plowman"  and  the  "  Canterbury  Tales."  The  world 
of  wealth  and  ease  and  laughter  through  which  the 
courtly  Chaucer  moves  with  eyes  downcast  as  in  a  pleas- 
ant dream  is  a  far-off  world  of  wrong  and  of  ungodliness  to 
the  gaunt  poet  of  the  poor.  Born  probably  in  Shropshire, 
where  he  had  been  put  to  school  and  received  minor  orders 
as  a  clerk,  "Long  Will,"  as  Longland  was  nicknamed  for  his 
tall  stature,  found  his  way  at  an  early  age  to  London,  and 
earned  a  miserable  livelihood  there  by  singing  "placebos" 
and  "diriges"  in  the  stately  funerals  of  his  day.  Men  took 
the  moody  clerk  for  a  madman  ;  his  bitter  poverty  quickened 
the  defiant  pride  that  made  him  loth — as  he  tells  us — to  bow 
to  the  gay  lords  and  dames  who  rode  decked  in  silver  and 
minivere  along  the  Cheap,  or  to  exchange  a  "  God  save  you  " 
with  the  law  sergeants  as  he  passed  their  new  house  in  the 
Temple.  His  world  is  the  world  of  the  poor  :  he  dwells  on 
the  poor  man's  life,  on  his  hunger  and  toil,  his  rough  revelry 
and  his  despair,  with  the  narrow  intensity  of  a  man  who  has 
no  outlook  beyond  it.  The  narrowness,  the  misery,  the 
monotony  of  the  life  he  paints  reflect  themselves  in  his  verse. 
It  is  only  here  and  there  that  a  love  of  nature  or  a  grim 
earnestness  of  wrath  quicken  his  rhyme  into  poetry  ;  there  is 
not  a  gleam  of  the  bright  human  sympathy  of  Chaucer,  of 
his  fresh  delight  in  the  gaiety,  the  tenderness,  the  daring  of 
the  world  about  him,  of  his  picturesque  sense  of  even  its 
coarsest  contrasts,  of  his  delicate  irony,  of  his  courtly  wit. 
The  cumbrous  allegory,  the  tedious  platitudes,  the  rhymed 
texts  from  Scripture  which  form  the  staple  of  Longland's 
work,  are  only  broken  here  and  there  by  phrases  of  a  shrewd 
common  sense,  by  bitter  outbursts,  by  pictures  of  a  broad 
Hogarthian  humor.  What  chains  one  to  the  poem  is  its 
deep  undertone  of  sadness  :  the  world  is  out  of  joint  and  the 
gaunt  rhymer  who  stalks  silently  along  the  Strand  has  no  faith 
in  his  power  to  put  it  right.  His  poem  covers  indeed  an  age 
of  shame  and  suffering  such  as  England  had  never  known, 
for  if  its  first  brief  sketch  appeared  two  years  after  the  Peace 
of  Bretigny  its  completion  may  be  dated  at  the  close  of  the 
leign,  of  Edward  the  Third,  and  its  final  issue  preceded  but 


RICHARD  THE  SECOND.      1381   TO   1399.  325 

by  a  single  year  the  Peasant  Revolt.  Londoner  as  he  is, 
Will's  fancy  flies  far  from  the  sin  and  suffering  of  the  great 
city  to  a  May-morning  in  the  Malvern  Hills.  "I  was  wery 
forvvandered  and  went  me  to  rest  under  a  broad  bank  by  a 
burn  side,  and  as  I  lay  and  leaned  and  looked  in  the  water  I 
slumbered  in  a  sleeping,  it  sweyved  (sounded)  so  merry." 
Just  as  Chaucer  gathers  the  typical  figures  of  the  world  he 
saw  into  his  pilgrim  train,  so  the  dreamer  gathers  into  a  wide 
field  his  army  of  traders  and  chaff erers,  of  hermits  and  soli- 
taries, of  minstrels,  "  japers  and  jinglers,"  bidders  and  beg- 
gars, plowmen  that  "in  setting  and  in  sowing  swonken 
(toil)  full  hard,"  pilgrims  "  with  their  wenches  after," 
weavers  and  laborers,  burgess  and  bondman,  lawyer  and 
scrivener,  court-haunting  bishops,  friars,  and  pardoners 
"  parting  the  silver"  with  the  parish  priest.  Their  pilgrim- 
age is  not  to  Canterbury,  but  to  Truth  ;  their  guide  to  Truth 
neither  clerk  nor  priest  but  Peterkin  the  Plowman,  whom 
they  find  plowing  in  his  field.  He  it  is  who  bids  the 
knight  no  more  wrest  gifts  from  his  tenant  nor  misdo  with 
the  poor.  e<  Though  he  be  thine  underling  here,  well  mayhap 
in  heaven  that  he  be  worthier  set  and  with  more  bliss  than 
thou.  .  .  .  For  in  charnel  at  church  churles  be  evil  to 
know,  or  a  knight  from  a  knave  there."  The  gospel  of 
equality  is  backed  by  the  gospel  of  labor.  .The  aim  of  the 
Plowman  is  to  work,  and  to  make  the  world  work  with 
him.  He  warns  the  laborer  as  he  warns  the  knight.  Hun- 
ger is  God's  instrument  in  bringing  the  idlest  to  toil,  and 
Hunger  waits  to  work  her  will  on  the  idler  and  the  waster. 
On  the  eve  of  the  great  struggle  between  wealth  and  labor 
Longland  stands  alone  in  his  fairness  to  both,  in  his  shrewd 
political  «'ind  religious  common  sense.  In  the  face  of  the 
popular  hatred  which  was  to  gather  round  John  of  Gaunt, 
he  paints  the  Duke  in  a  famous  apologue  as  the  cat  who, 
greedy  as  she  might  be,  at  any  rate  keeps  the  noble  rats  from 
utterly  devouring  the  mice  of  the  people.  Though  the  poet 
is  loyul  to  the  Church,  he  proclaims  a  righteous  life  to  be 
better  than  a  host  of  indulgences,  and  God  sends  His  pardon 
to  Piers  when  priests  dispute  it.  But  he  sings  as  a  man 
conscious  of  his  loneliness  and  without  hope.  It  is  snly  in 
a  dream  that  he  sees  Corruption,  "  Lady  Mede,"  brought  to 
trial,  and  the  world  repenting  at  the  preaching  of  lieason. 


HISTOKY   OF  OTHE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

In  the  waking  life  Reason  finds  110  listeners.  The  poet  him* 
self  la  looked  upon — he  tells  us  bitterly — as  a  madman. 
There  is  a  terrible  despair  in  the  close  of  his  later  poem, 
where  the  triumph  of  Christ  is  only  followed  by  the  reign  of 
Antichrist ;  where  Contrition  slumbers  amidst  the  revel  of 
Death  and  Sin  ;  and  Conscience,  hard  beset  by  Pride  and 
Sloth,  rouses  himself  with  a  last  effort,  and  seizing  his  pil- 
grim staff  wanders  over  the  world  to  find  Piers  Plowman. 

The  strife  indeed  which  Longland  would  have  averted 
raged  only  the  fiercer  after  the  repression  of  the  Peasant 
Revolt.  The  Statutes  of  Laborers,  effective  as  they 
P1"07^  in  sowing  hatred  between  employer  and 
employed,  between  rich  and  poor,  Avere  powerless 
for  their  immediate  ends,  either  in  reducing  the  actual  rate 
of  wages  or  in  restricting  the  mass  of  floating  labor  to  definite 
areas  of  employment.  During  the  century  and  a  half  after 
the  Peasant  Revolt  villeinage  died  out  so  rapidly  that  it 
became  a  rare  and  antiquated  thing.  A  hundred  years  after 
the  Black  Death  the  wages  of  an  English  laborer  could 
purchase  twice  the  amount  of  the  necessaries  of  life  which 
could  have  been  obtained  for  the  wages  paid  under  Edward 
the  Third.  The  statement  is  corroborated  by  the  incidental 
descriptions  of  the  life  of  the  working  classes  which  we  find 
in  Piers  Plowman.  Laborers,  Longland  tells  us,  "that 
have  no  land  to  live  on  but  their  hands  disdained  to  live  on 
penny  ale  or  bacon,  but  demanded  fresh  flesh  or  fish,  fried  or 
baked,  and  that  hot  and  hotter  for  chilling  of  their  maw." 
The  market  was  still  in  fact  in  the  laborer's  hands,  in  spite 
of  statutes  ;  "  and  but  if  he  be  highly  hired  else  will  he  chide 
and  wail  the  time  that  he  was  made  a  workman."  The  poet 
saw  clearly  that  as  population  rose  to  its  normal  rate  times 
such  as  these  would  pass  away.  "  Whiles  Hunger  was  their 
master  here  would  none  of  them  chide  or  strive  against  his 
statute,  so  sternly  he  looked  :  and  I  warn  you,  workmen,  win 
while  ye  may,  for  Hunger,  hithervvard  hasteth  him  fast." 

But  even  at  the  time  when  he  wrote  there  were  seasons  of 
the  year  during  which  employment  for  the  floating  mass  of 
labor  was  hard  to  find.  In  the  long  interval  between  harvest- 
tide  and  harvest-tide,  work  and  food  were  alike  scarce  in  the 
medieval  homestead.  "I  have  no  penny,"  says  Piers  the 
Plowman  in  such  a  season,  in  lines  which  give  us  the  pic- 


RICHARD   THE   SECOND.      1381    TO    1399.  327 

ture  of  a  farm  of  the  day,  "  pullets  for  to  buy,  nor  neither 
'geese  uor  pigs,  but  two  greeu  cheeses,  a  few  curds  and  cream, 
and  an  oaten  cake,  and  two  loaves  of  beans  and  bran  baken 
for  my  children.  I  have  no  salt  bacon,  nor  no  cooked  meat 
collops  for  to  make,  but  I  have  parsley  and  leeks  and  many 
cabbage  plants,  and  eke  a  cow  and  a  calf,  and  a  cart-mare  to 
draw  a-field  my  dung  while  the  drought  lasteth,  and  by  this 
livelihood  we  must  all  live  till  Lammas-tide  (August),  and 
by  that  I  hope  to  have  harvest  in  ruy  croft."  But  it  was  not 
till  Lammas-tide  that  high  wages  and  the  new  corn  bade 
"  Hunger  go  to  sleep,"  and  during  the  long  spring  and  sum- 
mer the  free  laborer,  and  the  ''waster  that  will  not  work  but 
wander  about,  that  will  eat  no  bread  but  the  finest  wheat, 
nor  drink  but  of  the  best  and  brownest  ale,"  was  a  source  of 
social  and  political  danger.  "  He  grieveth  him  against  God 
and  grudgeth  against  Reason,  and  then  curseth  he  the  King 
and  all  his  Council  after  such  law  to  allow  laborers  to  grieve." 
The  terror  of  the  landowners  expressed  itself  in  legislation 
which  was  a  fitting  sequel  to  the  Statutes  of  Laborers.  They 
forbade  the  child  of  any  tiller  of  the  soil  to  be  apprenticed  in 
a  town.  They  prayed  Richard  to  ordain  "that  no  bondman 
or  bondwoman  shall  place  their  children  at  school,  as  has 
been  done,  so  as  to  advance  their  children  in  the  world  by 
their  going  into  the  Church."  The  new  colleges  which  were 
being  founded  at  the  two  Universities  at  this  moment  closed 
their  gates  upon  villeins.  It  was  the  failure  of  such  futile 
efforts  to  effect  their  aim  which  drove  the  energy  of  the  great 
proprietors  into  a  new  direction,  and  in  the  end  revolution- 
ized the  whole  agricultural  system  of  the  country.  Sheep- 
farming  required  fewer  hands  than  tillage,  and  the  scarcity 
and  high  price  of  labor  tended  to  throw  more  and  more  land 
into  sheep-farms.  In  the  decrease  of  personal  service,  as 
villeinage  died  away,  it  became  the  interest  of  the  lord  to 
diminish  the  number  of  tenants  on  his  estate  as  it  had  been 
before  his  interest  to  maintain  it,  and  he  did  this  by  massing 
the  small  allotments  together  into  larger  holdings.  By  this 
course  of  eviction  the  number  of  the  free-labor  class  was 
enormously  increased  while  the  area  of  employment  was 
diminished  ;  and  the  social  danger  from  vagabondage  and  the 
"sturdy  beggar"  grew  every  day  greater  till  it  brought 
about  the  despotism  of  the  Tudors. 


328  HISTOEY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

This  social  danger  mingled  with  the  yet  more  formidable 
religious  peril  which  sprang  from  the  party  violence  of  the 

later  Lollardry.  The  persecution  of  Courtenay  had 
Lollardry.  deprived  the  religious  reform  of  its  more  learned 

adherents  and  of  the  support  of  the  Universities, 
while  Wyclifs  death  had  robbed  it  of  its  head  at  a  moment 
when  little  had  been  done  save  a  work  of  destruction.  From 
that  moment  Lollardry  ceased  to  be  in  any  sense  an  organized 
movement,  and  crumbled  into  a  general  spirit  of  revolt.  All 
the  religious  and  social  discontent  of  the  times  floated 
instinctively  to  this  new  center  ;  the  socialist  dreams  of  the 
peasantry,  the  new  and  keener  spirit  of  personal  morality,  the 
hatred  of  the  friars,  the  jealousy  of  the  great  lords  towards 
the  prelacy,  the  fanaticism  of  the  reforming  zealot,  were 
blended  together  in  a  common  hostility  to  the  Church  and  a 
common  resolve  to  substitute  personal  religion  for  its  dog- 
matic and  ecclesiastical  system.  But  it  was  this  want  of 
organization,  this  looseness  and  fluidity  of  the  new  movement, 
that  made  it  penetrate  through  every  class  of  society.  Women 
as  well  as  men  became  the  preachers  of  the  new  sect.  Lol- 
lardry had  its  own  schools,  its  own  books  ;  its  pamphlets  were 
passed  everywhere  from  hand  to  hand  ;  scurrilous  ballads 
which  revived  the  old  attacks  of  "  G-olias  "  in  the  Angevin 
times  upon  the  wealth  and  luxury  of  the  clergy  were  sung 
at  every  corner.  Nobles,  like  the  Earl  of  Salisbury,  and  at 
a  later  time  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  placed  themselves  openly  at 
the  head  of  the  cause  and  threw  open  their  gates  as  a  refuge 
for  its  missionaries.  London  in  its  hatred  of  the  clergy  be- 
came fiercely  Lollard,  and  defended  a  Lollard  preacher  who 
had  ventured  to  advocate  the  new  doctrines  from  the  pulpit  of 
St.  Paul's.  One  of  its  mayors,  John  of  Northampton,  showed 
the  influence  of  the  new  morality  by  the  Puritan  spirit  in 
which  he  dealt  with  the  morals  of  the  city.  Compelled  to 
act,  as  he  said,  by  the  remissnessof  the  clergy,  who  connived 
for  money  at  every  kind  of  debauchery,  he  arrested  the  loose 
women,  cut  off  their  hair,  and  carted  them  through  the 
streets  as  an  object  of  public  scorn.  But  the  moral  spirit 
of  the  new  movement,  though  infinitely  its  grander  side,  was 
less  dangerous  to  the  Church  than  its  open  repudiation  of  the 
older  doctrines  and  systems  of  Christendom.  Out  of  the 
floating  mass  of  opinion  which  bore  tl^e  name  of  Lollardry 


RICHARD   THE   SECOND.      1381   TO   1399.  329 

one  great  faith  gradually  evolved  itself,  a  faith  in  the  sole 
authority  of  the  Bible  as  a  source  of  religious  truth.  The 
translation  of  Wyelif  did  its  work.  Scripture,  complains  a 
canon  of  Leicester,  "became  a  vulgar  thing,  and  more  open 
to  lay  folk  and  women  that  knew  how  to  read  than  it  is  wont 
to  be  to  clerks  themselves."  Consequences  which  Wyelif  had 
perhaps  shrunk  from  drawing  were  boldly  drawn  by  his  dis- 
ciples. The  Church  was  declared  to  have  become  apostate, 
its  priesthood  was  denounced  as  no  priesthood,  its  sacraments 
as  idolatry.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  clergy  attempted  to  stifle 
the  new  movement  by  their  old  weapon  of  persecution.  The 
jealousy  entertained  by  the  baronage  and  gentry  of  every 
pretension  of  the  Church  to  secular  power  foiled  its  efforts  to 
make  persecution  effective.  At  the  moment  of  the  Peasant 
Revolt,  Courtenay  procured  the  enactment  of  a  statute 
which  commissioned  the  sheriffs  to  seize  all  persons  convicted 
before  the  bishops  of  preaching  heresy.  But  the  statute  was 
repealed  in  the  next  session,  and  the  Commons  added  to  the 
bitterness  of  the  blow  by  their  protest  that  they  considered 
it  "  in  nowise  their  interest  to  be  more  under  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  prelates  or  more  bound  by  them  than  their  ancestors 
had  been  in  times  past."  Heresy  indeed  was  still  a  felony  by 
the  common  law,  and  if  as  yet  we  meet  with  no  instances  of 
the  punishment  of  heretics  by  the  fire  it  was  because  the 
threat  of  such  a  death  was  commonly  followed  by  the  recan- 
tation of  the  Lollard.  But  the  restriction  of  each  bishop's 
jurisdiction  within  the  limits  of  his  own  diocese  made  it 
almost  impossible  to  arrest  the  wandering  preachers  of  the 
new  doctrine,  and  the  civil  punishment — even  if  it  had  been 
sanctioned  by  public  opinion — seems  to  have  long  fallen  into 
desuetude.  Experience  proved  to  the  prelates  that  few 
sheriffs  would  arrest  on  the  mere  warrant  of  an  ecclesiastical 
officer,  and  that  no  royal  court  would  issue  the  writ  "for  the 
burning  of  a  heretic  "  on  a  bishop's  requisition.  But  power- 
less as  the  efforts  of  the  Church  were  for  purposes  of  repression, 
they  were  effective  in  rousing  the  temper  of  the  Lollards  into 
a  bitter  fanaticism.  The  Lollard  teachers  directed  their 
fiercest  invectives  against  the  wealth  and  secularity  of  the 
great  Churchmen.  In  a  formal  petition  to  Parliament  they 
mingled  denunciations  of  the  riches  of  the  clergy  with  an 
open  profession  of  disbelief  in  transubstantiation,  priesthood, 


330  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

pilgrimages,  and  image  worship,  and  a  demand,  which  illus- 
trates the  strange  medley  of  opinions  which  jostled  together 
in  the  new  movement,  that  war  might  be  declared  unchristian, 
and  that  trades  such  as  those  of  the  goldsmith  or  the  armorer, 
which  were  contrary  to  apostolical  poverty,  might  be  banished 
from  the  realm.  They  contended  (and  it  is  remarkable  that 
a  Paliament  of  the  next  reign  adopted  the  statement)  that 
from  the  superfluous  revenues  of  the  Church,  if  once  they 
were  applied  to  purposes  of  general  utility,  the  king  might 
maintain  fifteen  earls,  fifteen  hundred  knights,  and  six 
thousand  squires,  besides  endowing  a  hundred  hospitals  for 
the  relief  of  the  poor. 

The  distress  of  the  landowners,  the  general  disorganization 
of  the  country,  in  every  part  of  which  bands  of  marauders 
.were  openly  defying  the  law,  the  panic  of  the 
Church  and  of  society  at  large  as  the  projects  of 
the  Lollards  shaped  themselves  into  more  daring 
and  revolutionary  forms,  added  a  fresh  keenness  to  the  na- 
tional discontent  at  the  languid  and  inefficient  prosecution 
of  the  war.  The  junction  of  the  French  arid  Spanish  fleets 
had  made  them  masters  of  the  seas  ;  what  fragments  were 
left  at  Guienne  lay  at  their  mercy,  and  the  northern  frontier 
of  England  itself  was  flung  open  to  France  by  the  alliance  of 
the  Scots.  The  landing  of  a  French  force  in  the  Forth  roused 
the  whole  country  to  a  desperate  effort,  and  a  large  and  well- 
equipped  army  of  Englishmen  penetrated  as  far  as  Edinburgh 
in  the  vain  hope  of  bringing  their  enemy  to  battle.  A  more 
terrible  blow  had  been  struck  in  the  reduction  of  Ghent  by 
the  French  troops,  and  the  loss  of  the  one  remaining  market 
for  English  commerce ;  while  the  forces  which  should  have 
been  employed  in  saving  it,  and  in  the  protection  of  the 
English  shores  against  the  threat  of  invasion,  were  squan- 
dered by  John  of  Gaunt  on  the  Spanish  frontier  in  pursuit 
of  a  visionary  crown,  which  he  claimed  in  his  wife's  right,  the 
daughter  of  Pedro  the  Cruel.  The  enterprise  showed  that 
the  Duke  had  now  abandoned  the  hope  of  directing  affairs  at 
home.  Robert  de  Vere  and  Michael  de  la  Pole,  the  Earl  of 
Suffolk,  had  stood  since  the  suppression  of  the  revolt  at  the 
head  of  the  royal  councils,  and  their  steady  purpose  was  to 
drive  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  from  power.  But  the  departure 
of  John  of  Gaunt  only  called  to  the  front  his  brother  and  his 


K1CHARD   THE    SECOND.      1381   TO   1393.  331 

son,  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  and  the  Earl  of  Derby  ;  while 
the  lukewarm  prosecution  of  the  war,  the  profuse  expen- 
diture of  the  Court,  and  above  all  the  manifest  will  of  the 
king  to  free  himself  from  Parliamentary  control,  estranged 
the  Lower  House.  The  Parliament  impeached  Suffolk  for 
corruption,  and  appointed  a  commission  of  regency  for  a 
year,  of  which  Gloucester  was  the  leading  spirit.  The  attempt 
of  the  young  king  at  the  close  of  the  session  to  reverse  these 
measures  was  crushed  by  the  appearance  of  Gloucester  and 
his  friends  in  arms  ;  in  the  Merciless  Parliament  a  charge  of 
high  treason  hurried  into  exile  or  to  death  Suffolk  with  his 
supporters,  the  five  judges  who  had  pronounced  the  commis- 
sion to  be  in  itself  illegal  were  banished,  and  four  members  of 
the  royal  household  sent  to  the  block.  But  hardly  a  year  had 
passed  when  Richard  found  himself  strong  enough  to  break 
down  by  a  word  the  government  against  which  he  had 
struggled  so  vainly.  Entering  the  Council  he  suddenly 
asked  his  uncle  to  tell  him  how  old  he  was.  "Your  High- 
ness," replied  Gloucester,  "  is  in  your  twenty-fourth  year." 
"  Then  I  am  old  enough  to  manage  my  own  affairs,"  said 
Richard  coolly.  "  I  have  been  longer  under  guardianship 
than  any  ward  in  my  realm.  I  thank  you  for  your  past 
services,  my  lords,  but  I  need  them  no  longer." 

For  eight  years  the  king  wielded  the  power  which  thus 
passed  quietly  into  his  hands  with  singular  wisdom  and  good 
fortune.  On  the  one  hand  he  carried  his  peace 
policy  into  effect  by  negotiations  with  France, 
which  brought  about  a  truce  renewed  year  by 
year  till  it  was  prolonged  in  1394  for  four  years,  and  this  pe- 
riod of  rest  was  lengthened  for  twenty-five  years  by  a  subse- 
quent agreement  on  his  marriage  with  Isabella,  the  daughter 
of  Charles  the  Sixth.  On  the  other  he  announced  his  resolve 
to  rule  by  the  advice  of  his  Parliament,  submitted  to  its  cen- 
sure, and  consulted  it  on  all  matters  of  importance.  In  a 
short  campaign  he  pacified  Ireland  ;  and  the  Lollard  troubles 
which  had  threatened  during  his  absence  died  away  on  his 
return.  But  the  brilliant  abilities  which  Richard  shared 
with  the  rest  of  the  Plantagenets  were  marred  by  a  fitful  in- 
constancy, an  insane  pride,  and  a  craving  for  absolute  power. 
His  uncle,  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  remained  at  the  head  of 
the  opposition  ;  while  the  king  had  secured  the  friendship  of 


832  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

John  of  Gaunt,  and  of  his  son  Henry,  Earl  of  Derby.  The 
readiness  with  which  Eichard  seized  on  an  opportunity  of 
provoking  a  contest  shows  the  bitterness  with  which  during 
the  long  years  that  had  passed  since  the  flight  of  Suffolk  he 
had  brooded  over  his  projects  of  vengeance.  The  Duke  of 
Gloucester  and  the  Earls  of  Arundel  and  Warwick  were  ar- 
rested on  a  charge  of  conspiracy.  A  Parliament  packed  with 
royal  partizans  was  used  to  crush  Richard's  opponents.  The 
pardons  granted  nine  years  before  were  recalled  ;  the  com- 
mission of  regency  declared  to  have  been  illegal,  and  its  pro- 
moters guilty  of  treason.  The  blow  was  ruthlessly  followed 
up.  The  Duke  was  saved  from  a  trial  by  a  sudden  death  in 
his  prison  at  Calais  ;  while  his  chief  supporter,  Arundel,  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was  impeached  and  banished,  and 
the  nobles  of  his  party  condemned  to  death  and  imprisonment. 
The  measures  introduced  into  the  Parliament  of  the  following 
year  showed  that  besides  his  projects  of  revenge  Richard's  de- 
signs had  widened  into  a  definite  plan  of  absolute  government. 
It  declared  null  the  proceedings  of  the  Parliament  of  1388. 
He  was  freed  from  Parliamentary  control  by  the  grant  to  him 
of  a  subsidy  upon  wool  and  leather  for  the  term  of  his  life. 
His  next  step  got  rid  of  Parliament  itself.  A  committee  of 
twelve  peers  and  six  commoners  was  appointed  in  Parliament, 
with  power  to  continue  their  sittings  after  its  dissolution  and 
to  "'examine  and  determine  all  matters  and  subjects  which 
had  been  moved  in  the  presence  of  the  king,  with  all  the 
dependences  of  those  not  determined."  The  aim  of  Richard 
was  to  supersede  by  means  of  this  permanent  commission  the 
body  from  which  it  originated  ;  he  at  once  employed  it  to 
determine  causes  and  carry  out  his  will,  and  forced  from  every 
tenant  of  the  Crown  an  oath  to  recognize  the  validity  of  its 
acts  and  to  oppose  any  attempts  to  alter  and  revoke  them. 
With  such  an  engine  at  his  command  the  king  was  absolute, ' 
and  with  the  appearance  of  absolutism  the  temper  of  his  reign 
suddenly  changed.  A  system  of  forced  loans,  the  sale  of 
charters  of  pardon  to  Gloucester's  adherents,  the  outlawry  of 
seven  counties  at  once  on  the  plea  that  they  had  supported 
his  enemies  and  must  purchase  pardon,  a  reckless  interference 
with  the  course  of  justice,  roused  into  new  life  the  social  and 
political  discontent  which  was  threatening  the  very  existence 
of  the  Crown. 


RICHARD   THE   SECOND.      1881   TO   1399.  333 

By  his  good  government  and  by  his  evil  government  alike, 
Richard  had  succeeded  in  alienating  every  class  of  his  subjects. 
He  had  estranged  the  nobles  by  his  peace  policy,  r^g  Lancag. 
the  landowners  by  his  refusal  to  sanction  the  in-  trian  Rev- 
sane  measures  of  repression  they  directed  against  olution. 
the  laborer,  the  merchant  class  by  his  illegal  exactions,  and 
the  Church  by  his  want  of  zeal  against  the  Lollards.  Richard 
himself  had  no  sympathy  with  the  Lollards,  and  the  new 
sect  as  a  social  danger  was  held  firmly  at  bay.  But  the  royal 
officers  showed  little  zeal  in  aiding  the  bishops  to  seize  or 
punish  the  heretical  teachers,  and  Lollardry  found  favor  in 
the  very  precincts  of  the  Court ;  it  was  through  the  patronage 
of  Richard's  first  queen,  Anne  of  Bohemia,  that  the  tracts  and 
Bible  of  the  Reformer  had  been  introduced  into  her  native 
land,  to  give  rise  to  the  remarkable  movement  which  found 
its  earliest  leaders  in  John  Hnss  and  Jerome  of  Prague. 
Richard  stood  almost  alone  in  fact  in  his  realm,  but  even  this 
accumulated  mass  of  hatred  might  have  failed  to  crush  him 
had  not  an  act  of  jealousy  and  tyranny  placed  an  able  and 
unscrupulous  leader  at  the  head  of  the  national  discontent. 
Henry,  Earl  of  Derby  and  Duke  of  Hereford,  the  eldest  son 
of  John  of  Gaunt,  though  he  had  taken  part  against  his  royal 
cousin  in  the  earlier  troubles  of  his  reign,  had  loyally  sup- 
ported him  in  his  recent  measures  against  Gloucester.  No 
sooner,  however,  were  these  measures  successful  than  Richard 
turned  his  new  power  against  the  more  dangerous  House  of 
Lancaster,  and  availing  himself  of  a  quarrel  between  the 
Dukes  of  Hereford  and  Norfolk,  in  which  each  party 
bandied  accusations  of  treason  against  the  other,  banished 
both  from  the  realm.  Banishment  was  soon  followed  by  the 
annulling  of  leave  which  had  been  given  to  Henry  to  receive 
his  inheritance  on  John  of  Gaunt's  death,  and  the  king  himself 
seized  the  Lancastrian  estates.  At  the  moment  when  he  had 
thus  driven  his  cousin  to  despair,  Richard  crossed  into  Ire- 
land to  complete  the  work  of  conquest  and  organization  which 
he  had  begun  there  ;  and  Archbishop  Arundel,  an  exile  like 
himself,  urged  the  Duke  to  take  advantage  of  the  king's 
absence  for  the  recovery  of  his  rights.  Eluding  the  vigilance 
of  the  French  Court,  at  which  he  had  taken  shelter,  Henry 
landed  with  a  handful  of  men  on  the  coast  of  Yorkshire, 
where  he  was  at  once  joined  by  the  Earls  of  Northumberland 


834  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

and  Westmoreland,  the  heads  of  the  great  houses  of  the 
Percies  and  the  Nevilles  ;  and,  with  an  army  which  grew  as 
he  advanced,  entered  triumphantly  into  London.  The  Duke 
of  York,  whom  the  king  had  left  regent,  submitted,  and  his 
forces  joined  those  of  Henry  ;  and  when  Richard  landed  at 
Milford'Haven  he  found  the  kingdom  lost.  His  own  army 
dispersed  as  it  landed,  and  the  deserted  king  fled  in  disguise 
to  North  Wales,  to  find  a  second  force  which  the  Earl  of 
Salisbury  had  gathered  for  his  support  already  disbanded. 
Invited  to  a  conference  with  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  at  Flint, 
he  saw  himself  surrounded  by  the  rebel  forces.  "  I  am  be- 
trayed/' he  cried,  as  the  view  of  his  enemies  burst  on  him 
from  the  hill ;  "there  are  pennons  and  banners  in  the  valley." 
But  it  was  too  late  for  retreat.  Richard  was  seized  and 
brought  before  his  cousin.  "lam  come  before  my  time," 
said  Lancaster,  "but  I  will  show  you  the  reason.  Your 
people,  my  lord,  complain  that  for  the  space  of  twenty  years 
you  have  ruled  them  harshly :  however,  if  it  please  God,  I 
will  help  you  to  rule  them  better."  "Fair  cousin,"  replied 
the  king,  "since  it  pleases  you,  it  pleases  me  well."  But 
Henry's  designs  went  far  beyond  a  share  in  the  government 
of  the  realm.  The  Parliament  which  assembled  in  West- 
minster Hall  received  with  shouts  of  applause  a  formal  paper 
in  which  Richard  resigned  the  crown  as  one  incapable  of 
reigning  and  worthy  for  his  great  demerits  to  be  deposed. 
The  resignation  was  confirmed  by  a  solemn  Act  of  Deposition. 
The  coronation  oath  was  read,  and  a  long  impeachment, 
which  stated  the  breach  of  the  promises  made  in  it,  Avas 
followed  by  a  solemn  vote  of  both  Houses  which  removed 
Richard  from  the  state  and  authority  of  king.  According 
to  the  strict  rules  of  hereditary  descent  as  construed  by  the 
feudal  lawyers,  by  an  assumed  analogy  with  the  descent  of 
ordinary  estates,  the  crown  would  now  have  passed  to  a  house 
which  had  at  an  earlier  period  played  a  leading  part  in  the 
revolutions  of  the  Edwards.  The  great  grandson  of  the 
Mortimer  who  brought  about  the  deposition  of  Edward  the 
Second  had  married  the  daughter  and  heiress  of  Lionel  of 
Clarence,  the  third  son  of  Edward  the  Third.  The  child- 
lessness of  Richard  and  the  death  of  Edward's  second  son 
without  issue  placed  Edmund,  his  grandson  by  this  marriage, 
first  among  the  claimants  of  the  crown  ;  but  he  was  a  child 


THE   HOUSE   OP  LANCASTER.      1399   TO   1422.          835 

of  six  years  old,  the  strict  rule  of  hereditary  descent  had  never 
received  any  formal  recognition  in  the  case  of  the  crown, 
and  precedent  had  established  the  right  of  Parliament  to 
choose  in  such  a  case  a  successor  among  any  other  member 
of  the  Royal  House.  Only  one  such  successor  was  in  fact 
possible.  Rising  from  his  seat  and  crossing  himself,  Henry 
of  Lancaster  solemnly  challenged  the  crown  "  as  that  I  am 
descended  by  right  line  of  blood  coming  from  the  good  lord 
King  Henry  the  Third,  and  through  that  right  that  God  of 
His  grace  hath  sent  me  with  help  of  my  kin  and  of  my  friends 
to  recover  it :  the  which  realm  was  in  point  to  be  undone  for 
default  of  governance  and  undoing  of  good  laws."  Whatever 
defects  such  a  claim  might  present  were  more  than  covered 
by  the  solemn  recognition  of  Parliament.  The  two  Arch- 
bishops, taking  the  new  sovereign  by  the  hand,  seated  him 
upon  the  throne,  and  Henry  in  emphatic  words  ratified  the 
compact  between  himself  and  his  people.  "  Sirs,"  he  said  to 
the  prelates,  lords,  knights,  and  burgesses  gathered  round 
him,  "I  thank  God  and  you,  spiritual  and  temporal,  and  all 
estates  of  the  land  :  and  do  you  to  wit  it  is  not  my  will  that 
any  man  think  that  by  way  of  conquest  I  would  disinherit 
any  of  his  heritage,  franchises,  or  other  rights  that  he  ought 
to  have,  nor  put  him  out  of  the  good  that  he  has  and  has  had 
by  the  good  laws  and  customs  of  the  realm,  except  those  per- 
sons that  have  been  against  the  good  purpose  and  the  common 
profit  of  the  realm." 

Section  VI.— The  House  of  Lancaster.    1399—1422. 

[Authorities.*-For  Henry  IV,  the  "  Annales  Henrici  "  Quarti  and  Walsingham,  as 
before.  For  his  successor,  the  "  Acta  Henrici  Quinti  "  by  Titus  Livius,  a  chaplain 
in  the  royal  army  (English  Historical  Society)  ;  a  life  by  Elmham,  Prior  of  Lenton, 
simpler  in  style  but  identical  in  arrangement  and  facts  with  the  former  work  ;  a 
biography  by  Robert  Redman  ;  a  metrical  Chronicle  by  Elmham  (published  in 
Rolls  Series  in  "Memorials  of  Henry  V.")  ;  and  the  meager  chronicles  of 
Hardyng  and  Otterbourne.  Monstrelet  is  the  most  important  French  authority 
for  this  period  ;  for  the  Norman  campaigns  see  M.  Puiseux's  "Siege  de  Rouen  " 
(Caen,  1867).  Lord  Brougham  has  given  a  vigorous  and,  in  a  constitutional  point 
of  view,  valuable  sketch  of  this  period  in  his  "  History  of  England  under  the 
House  of  Lancaster.") 

Raised  to  the  throne  by  a  Parliamentary  revolution  and 
resting  its  claims  on  a  Parliamentary  title,  the  House  of 
Lancaster  was  precluded  by  its  very  position  from    The  Sup- 
any  resumption  of  the  late  struggle  for  independ-  prrssion  of 
ence  on  the  part  of  the  Crown  which  had  culmi-    I-ollardiy. 


336  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

nated  in  the  bold  effort  of  Richard  the  Second.  During  no 
period  of  oar  early  history  were  the  powers  of  the  two 
Houses  so  frankly  recognized.  The  tone  of  Henry  the 
Fourth  till  the  very  close  of  his  reign  is  that  of  humble  com- 
pliance with  the  prayers  of  the  Parliament,  and  even  his  im- 
perious successor  shrank  almost  with  timidity  from  any  con- 
flict with  it.  But  the  Crown  had  been  bought  by  other 
pledges  less  noble  than  that  of  constitutional  rule.  The 
support  of  the  nobles  had  been  partly  won  by  the  hope  of  a 
renewal  of  the  fatal  war  with  France.  The  support  of  the 
Church  had  been  purchased  by  the  more  terrible  promise  of 
persecution.  The  last  pledge  was  speedily  redeemed.  In  the 
first  Convocation  of  his  reign  Henry  declared  himself  the 
protector  of  the  Church  and  ordered  the  prelates  to  take 
measures  for  the  suppression  of  heresy  and  of  the  wandering 
preachers.  His  declaration  was  but  a  prelude  to  the  Statute 
of  Heresy  which  was  passed  at  the  opening  of  1401.  By  the 
provisions  of  this  infamous  Act  the  hindrances  which  had  till 
now  neutralized  the  efforts  of  the  bishops  were  taken  away. 
Not  only  were  they  permitted  to  arrest  all  preachers  of  heresy, 
all  schoolmasters  infected  with  heretical  teaching,  all  owners 
and  writers  of  heretical  books,  and  to  imprison  them,  even  if 
they  recanted,  at  the  king's  pleasure,  but  a  refusal  to  abjure  or 
a  relapse  after  abjuration  enabled  them  to  hand  over  the  heretic 
to  the  civil  officers,  and  by  these — so  ran  the  first  legal  enact- 
ment of  religious  bloodshed  which  defiled  our  Statute-book 
— he  was  to  be  burned  on  a  high  place  before  the  people. 
The  statute  was  hardly  passed  when  William  Sautre,  a 
parish  priest  at  Lynn,  became  its  first  victim.  Nine  years 
later  a  layman,  John  Badby,  was  committed  to  the  flames  in 
the  presence  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  for  a  defiial  of  transub- 
stantiation.  The  groans  of  the  sufferer  were  taken  for  a  re- 
cantation, and  the  Prince  ordered  the  fire  to  be  plucked 
away  ;  but  the  offer  of  life  and  of  a  pension  failed  to  break 
the  spirit  of  the  Lollard,  and  he  was  hurled  back  to  his 
doom.  The  enmity  of  France,  and  the  fierce  resentment 
of  the  Reformers,  added  danger  to  the  incessant  revolts 
which  threatened  the  throne  of  Henry.  The  mere  mainten- 
ance of  his  power  through  the  troubled  years  of  his  reign  is 
the  best  proof  of  the  king's  ability.  A  conspiracy  of 
Richard's  kinsmen,  the  Earls  of  Huntingdon  and  Kent,  was 


THE  HOUSE   OF   LANCASTER.      1399  TO    1422.         337 

suppressed,  and  was  at  once  followed  by  Richard's  death  in 
prison.  The  Percies  broke  out  in  rebellion,  and  Hotspur, 
the  son  of  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  leagued  himself 
with  the  Scots  and  with  the  insurgents  of  Wales.  He  was 
defeated  and  slain  in  an  obstinate  battle  near  Shrewsbury  ; 
but  two  years  later  his  father  rose  iu  afresh  insurrection,  and 
though  the  seizure  and  execution  of  his  fellow-conspirator 
Scrope,  the  Arch  bishop  of  York,  drove  Northumberland  over 
the  bonier,  he  remained  till  his  death  in  a  later  inroad  a 
peril  to  the  throne.  Encouraged  meanwhile  by  the  weakness 
of  England,  \Ya,les,xso  long  tranquil,  shook  off  the  yoke  of  her 
conquerors,  ami  the  whole  country  rose  at  the  call  of  Owen 
GlymluT  or  Gleudqwer,  a  descendant  of  its  native  princes. 
Owen  left.  uli'i's,  as  of  old,  to  contend  with  famiueand 

the  mouj^^^lHphs  ;  but  they  had  no  sooner  retired  than  he 
salliei  !om  his  inaccessible  fastnesses  to  win  victories 

whicaRfre  followed  by  the  adhesion  of  all  North  Wales  and 

** 

greatf^prt  of  the  South  to  his  cause,  while  a  force  of  French 
xiliaries  was  despatched  %  Charles  of  France  to  his  aid. 
was  only  the  restoration  of  peace  in  England  which  enabled 
Henryito  roll  back  the  tide  of  Glyndwr's  success.  By  slow 
and  defl$>er;ite  campaigns  continued  through  four  years  the 
Prince  of  Wales  wrested  from  him  the  South  ;  his  subjects 
in  the  North,  discouraged  by  successive  defeats,  gradually  fell 
away  from  his  standard  ;  and  the  repulse  of  a  bold  descent 
upon  Shropshire  drove  Owen  at  last  to  take  refuge  amoug 
the  mountains  of  Snowdon,  where  he  seems  to  have  main- 
tained the  contest,  single-handed,  till  his  death.  With  the 
close  of  the  Welsh  rising  the  Lancastrian  throne  felt  itself 
secure  from  without,  but  the  danger  from  the  Lollards  re- 
mained as  great  as  ever  within.  The  new  statute  and  its 
terrible  penalties  were  boldly  defied.  The  death  of  the  Earl 
of  Salisbury  in  the  first  of  the  revolts  against  Henry,  though 
his  gory  head  was  welcomed  into  London  by  a  procession  of 
abbots  and  bishops  who  went  out  singing  psalms  of  thanks- 
giving to  meet  it,  only  transferred  the  leadership  of  the 
party  to  one  of  the  foremost  warriors  of  the  time.  Sir  John 
Oldeastle.  whose  marriage  raised  him  to  the  title  of  Lord 
Cobham,  threw  open  his  castle  of  Cowling  to  the  Lollards  r.a 
their  headquarters,  sheltered  their  preachers,  and  set  the 
prohibitions  and  sentences  of  the  bishops  at  defiance. 

3? 


338  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

When  Henry  the  Fourth  died  in  1413  worn  out  with  the 
troubles  of  his  reign,  his  successor  was  forced  to  deal  with 
this  formidable  question.  The  bishops  demanded  that  Cob- 
ham  should  be  brought  to  justice,  and  though  the  king 
pleaded  for  delay  in  the  case  of  one  who  was  so  close  a 
friend,  his  open  defiance  at  last  forced  him  to  act.  A  body 
of  royal  troops  arrested  Lord  Cobharn  and  carried  him  to  the 
Tower.  His  escape  was  the  signal  for  a  vast  revolt.  A 
secret  order  summoned  the  Lollards  to  assemble  in  St.  Giles's 
fields  outside  London.  We  gather,  if  not  the  real  aims  of 
the  rising,  at  least  the  terror  that  it  caused,  from  Henry's 
statement  that  its  purpose  was  "to  destroy  himself,  his 
brothers,  and  several  of  the  spiritual  and  temporal  lords  ;" 
but  the  vigilance  of  the  young  king  prevented  the  junction 
of  the  Lollards  of  London  with  their  friends  in  the  country, 
and  those  who  appeared  at  the  place  of  meeting  were  dis- 
persed by  the  royal  forces.  On  the  failure  of  the  rising  the 
jaw  was  rendered  more  rigorous.  Magistrates  were  directed 
to  arrest  all  Lollards  and  hand  them  over  to  the  bishops  ;  a 
conviction  of  heresy  was  made  to  entail  forfeiture  of  blood 
and  of  estate ;  and  thirty-nine  prominent  Lollards  were 
brought  to  execution.  Cobham  escaped,  and  for  four  years 
longer  strove  to  rouse  revolt  after  revolt.  He  was  at  last 
captured  on  the  Welsh  border  and  burned  as  a  heretic. 

With  the  death  of  Oldcastle  the  political  activity  of 
Lollardry  came  suddenly  to  an  end,  while  the  steady  per- 
secution of  the  bishops,  if  it  failed  to  extinguish 
Agincourt.  it  as  a  religious  movement,  succeeded  in  destroy- 
ing the  vigor  and  energy  which  it  had  shown  at  the 
outset  of  its  career.  But  the  House  of  Lancaster  had,  as  yet, 
only  partially  accomplished  the  aims  with  which  it  mounted 
the  throne.  In  the  eyes  of  the  nobles,  one  of  Richard's 
crimes  had  been  his  policy  of  peace,  and  the  aid  which  they 
gave  to  the  revolution  sprang  partly  from  their  hope  of  a 
renewal  of  the  war.  The  energy  of  the  war-party  was 
seconded  by  the  temper  of  the  nation  at  large,  already  for- 
getful of  the  sufferings  of  the  past  struggle  and  longing  only 
to  wipe  out  its  shame.  The  internal  calamities  of  France 
offered  at  this  moment  a  tempting  opportunity  for  aggression. 
Its  king,  Charles  the  Sixth,  was  a  maniac,  while  its  princes 
and  nobles  were  divided  into  two  great  parties,  the  one 


THE   HOUSE  OF  LANCASTER.      1399   TO   1422.          339 

headed  by  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  and  bearing  his  name,  the 
other  by  the  Duke  of  Orleans  and  bearing  the  title  of 
Armagnacs.  The  struggle  had  been  jealously  watched  by 
Henry  the  Fourth,  but  his  attempt  to  feed  it  by  pushing 
an  English  force  into  France  at  once  united  the  combatants. 
Their  strife,  however,  recommenced  more  bitterly  than  ever 
when  the  claim  of  the  French  crown  by  Henry  the  Fifth  on 
his  accession  declared  his  purpose  of  renewing  the  war. 
No  claim  could  have  been  more  utterly  baseless,  for  the 
Parliamentary  title  by  which  the  House  of  Lancaster  held 
England  could  give  it  no  right  over  France,  and  the  strict 
law  of  hereditary  succession  which  Edward  asserted  could  be 
pleaded,  if  pleaded  at  all,  only  by  the  House  of  Mortimer. 
Not  only  the  claim,  indeed,  but  the  very  nature  of  the  war 
itself  was  wholly  different  from  that  of  Edward  the  Third. 
Edward  had  been  forced  into  the  struggle  against  his  will  by 
the  ceaseless  attacks  of  France,  and  his  claim  of  the  crown 
•was  a  mere  afterthought  to  secure  the  alliance  of  Flanders. 
The  war  of  Henry,  on  the  other  hand,  though  in  form  a 
renewal  of  the  earlier  struggle  on  the  expiration  of  the  truce 
made  by  Richard  the  Second,  was  in  fact  a  wanton  aggression 
on  the  part  of  a  nation  tempted  by  the  helplessness  of  its 
opponent  and  galled  by  the  memory  of  former  defeat.  Its 
one  excuse  indeed  lay  in  the  attacks  which  France  for  the 
past  fifteen  years  had  directed  against  the  Lancastrian  throne, 
its  encouragement  of  every  enemy  without  and  of  every 
traitor  within.  In  the  summer  of  1415  the  king  sailed  for 
the  Norman  coast,  and  his  first  exploit  was  the  capture  of 
Harfleur.  Dysentery  made  havoc  in  his  ranks  during  the 
siege,  and  it  was  with  a  mere  handful  of  men  that  he  re- 
solved to  insult  the  enemy  by  a  daring  march,  like  that  of 
Edward,  upon  Calais.  The  discord,  however,  on  which  he 
probably  reckoned  for  security,  vanished  before  the  actual 
appearance  of  the  invaders  in  the  heart  of  France  ;  and  when 
his  weary  and  half-starved  force  succeeded  in  crossing  the 
Somme,  it  found  sixty  thousand  Frenchmen  encamped  on  the 
field  of  Agincourt  right  across  its  line  of  march.  Their  posi- 
tion, flanked  on  either  side  by  woods,  but  with  a  front  so 
narrow  that  the  dense  masses  were  drawn  up  thirty  men 
deep,  was  strong  for  purposes  of  defense  but  ill  suited  for 
attack  ;  and  the  French  leaders,  warned  by  the  experience 


\ 
340  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

of  Crecy  and  Poitiers,  resolved  to  await  the  English  advance. 
Henry,  on  the  other  hand,  had  no  choice  between  attack  and 
unconditional  surrender.  His  troops  were  starving,  and  the 
way  to  Calais  lay  across  the  French  army.  But  the  king's 
courage  rose  with  the  peril.  A  knight  in  his  train  wished 
that  the  thousands  of  stout  warriors  lying  idle  that  night  in 
England  had  been  standing  in  his  ranks.  Henry  answered 
with  a  burst  of  scorn.  "  I  would  not  have  a  single  man 
more,"  he  replied.  "  If  God  gives  us  the  victory,  it  will  be 
plain  that  we  owe  it  to  His  grace.  If  not,  the  fewer  we  are, 
the  less  loss  for  England/'  Starving  and  sick  as  were  the 
handful  of  men  whom  he  led,  they  shared  the  spirit  of  their 
leader.  As  the  chill  rainy  night  passed  away,  his  archers 
bared  their  arms  and  breasts  to  give  fair  play  to  "  the 
crooked  stick  and  the  gray  goose  wing,"  but  for  which— as 
the  rhyme  ran — "  England  were  but  a  fling,"  and  with  a 
great  shout  sprang  forward  to  the  attack.  The  sight  of 
their  advance  roused  the  fiery  pride  of  the  French  ;  the  wise 
resolve  of  their  leaders  was  forgotten,  and  the  dense  mass  of 
men-at-arms  plunged  heavily  forward  through  miry  ground 

;  on  the.  English  front.  But  at  the  first  sign  of  movement 
Henry  had  halted  his  line,  and  fixing  in  the  ground  the 

-  sharpened  stakes  with  which  each  man  was  furnished,  his 
archers  poured  their  fatal  arrow  flights  into  the  hostile  ranks. 
The  carnage  was  terrible,  but  the  desperate  charges  of  the 
French  knighthood  at  last  drove  the  English  archers  to  the 
;.u;h boring  woods,  from  which  they  were  still  able  to  pour 
rlirir  shot  into  the  enemy's  flanks,  while  Henry,  with  the 
men-at-arms  around  him,  flung  himself  on  the  French  line. 
In  the  terrible  struggle  which  followed  the  king  bore  off  the 
palm  of  bravery  :  he  was  felled  once  by  a  blow  from  a 
French  mace,  and  the  crown  on  his  helmet  was  cleft  by  the 
sword  of  the  Duke  of  Alenc.on  ;  but  the  enemy  was  at  last 
broken,  and  the  defeat  of  the  main  body  of  the  French  was 
followed  at  once  by  the  rout  of  their  reserve.  The  triumph 
was  more  complete,  as  the  odds  were  even  greater,  than  at 
Crecy.  Eleven  thousand  Frenchmen  lay  dead  on  the  field, 
and  more  than  a  hundred  princes  and  great  lords  were 
among  the  fallen. 

The  immediate  result  of  the  battle  of  Agincourt  was  small, 
for  the  English  arrny  was  too  exhausted  for  pursuit,  and  it 


THE  HOUSE  OF  LANCASTER.      1399  TO  1422.         341 

made  its  way  to  Calais  only  to  return  to  England.  The  war 
was  limited  to  a  contest  for  the  command  of  the  Channel, 
till  the  increasing  bitterness  of  the  strife  between  ^he  Con- 
the  Burgundians  and  Armagnucs  encouraged  quest  of 
Henry  to  resume  his  attempt  to  recover  Nor-  Normandy, 
mandy.  Whatever  may  have  been  his  aim  in  this  enter- 
prise— whether  it  were,  as  has  been  suggested,  to  provide 
a  refuge  for  his  house,  should  its  power  be  broken  in 
England,  or  simply  to  acquire  a  command  of  the  seas — the 
patience  and  skill  with  which  his  object  was  accomplished 
raise  him  high  in  the  rank  of  military  leaders.  Disembark- 
ing with  an  army  of  40,000  men,  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Touque,  he  stormed  Caen,  received  the  surrender  of  Bayeux, 
reduced  Aler^on  and  Falaise,  and  detaching  his  brother,  the 
Duke  of  Gloucester,  to  occupy  the  Cotentin,  made  himself 
master  of  Avranches  and  Domfront.  With  Lower  Normandy 
wholly  in  his  hands,  he  advanced  upon  Evreux,  captured 
Louviers,  and,  seizing  Pont-de-1'Arche,  threw  his  troops 
across  the  Seine.  The  end  of  these  masterly  movements  was 
now  revealed.  Eouen  was  at  this  time  the  largest  and 
wealthiest  of  the  towns  of  France  ;  its  walls  were  defended  by 
a  powerful  artillery  ;  Alan  Blanchard,  a  brave  and  resolute 
patriot,  infused  the  fire  of  his  own  temper  into  the  vast  pop- 
ulation ;  and  the  garrison,  already  strong,  was  backed  by 
fifteen  thousand  citizens  in  arms.  But  the  genius  of  Henry 
was  more  than  equal  to  the  difficulties  with  which  he  had  to 
deal.  He  had  secured  himself  from  an  attack  on  his  rear  by 
the  reduction  of  Lower  Normandy,  his  earlier  occupation  of 
Harfleur  severed  the  town  from  the  sea,  and  his  conquest  of 
Pont-de-1'Arche  cut  it  off  from  relief  on  the  side  of  Paris. 
Slowly  but  steadily  the  king  drew  his  lines  of  investment 
round  the  doomed  city  ;  a  flotilla  was  brought  up  from  Har- 
fleur, a  bridge  of  boats  thrown  over  the  Seine  above  the  town, 
the  deep  trenches  of  the  besiegers  protected  by  posts,  and  the 
desperate  sallies  of  the  garrison  stubbornly  beaten  back.  For 
six  months  Rouen  held  resolutely  out,  but  famine  told  fast  on 
the  vast  throng  of  country  folk  who  had  taken  refuge  within 
its  walls.  Twelve  thousand  of  these  were  at  last  thrust  out 
of  the  city  gates,  but  the  cold  policy  of  the  conqueror  refused 
them  passage,  and  they  perished  between  the  trenches  and 
the  walls.  In  the  hour  of  their  agony  women  gave  birth  to 


342  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

infants,  but  even  the  new-born  babes,  which  were  drawn  up  in 
baskets  to  receive  baptism,  were  lowered  again  to  die  on  their 
mothers'  breasts.  It  was  little  better  within  the  town  itself. 
As  winter  drew  on  one-half  of  the  population  wasted  away. 
"  War/'  said  the  terrible  king,  "  has  three  handmaidens  ever 
waiting  on  her,  Fire,  Blood,  and  Famine,  and  I  have  chosen 
the  meekest  maid  of  the  three/'  But  his  demand  of  uncon- 
ditional surrender  nerved  the  citizens  to  a  resolve  of  despair  ; 
they  determined  to  fire  the  city,  and  fling  themselves  in  a  mass 
on  the  English  lines  ;  and  Henry,  fearful  lest  his  prize  should 
escape  him  at  the  last,  was  driven  to  offer  terms.  Those  who 
rejected  a  foreign  yoke  were  suffered  to  leave  the  city,  but  his 
vengeance  reserved  its  victim  in  Alan  Blanchard,  and  the 
brave  patriot  was  at  Henry's  orders  put  to  death  in  cold 
blood. 

A  few  sieges  completed  the  reduction  of  Normandy.  The 
king's  designs  were  still  limited  to  the  acquisition  of  that  prov- 
The  Con-  ^nce  >  an(^  pausing  in  his  career  of  conquest,  he 
quest  of  strove  to  win  its  loyalty  by  a  remission  of  taxation 
France.  an(j  a  redress  of  grievances,  and  to  seal  its  posses- 
sion by  a  formal  peace  with  the  French  Crown.  The  con- 
ferences, however,  which  were  held  for  this  purpose  at  Pon- 
toise  failed  through  the  temporary  reconciliation  of  the 
French  factions,  while  the  length  and  expense  of  the  war 
began  to  rouse  remonstrance  and  discontent  at  home.  The 
king's  difficulties  were  at  their  height  when  the  assassination 
of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  at  Montereau,  in  the  very  presence 
of  the  Dauphin  with  whom  he  had  come  to  hold  conference, 
rekindled  the  fires  of  civil  strife.  The  whole  Burgnndian 
party,  with  the  new  Duke,  Philip  the  Good,  at  its  head,  flung 
itself  in  a  wild  thirst  for  revenge,  into  Henry's  hands.  The 
mad  king,  Charles  the  Sixth,  with  his  queen  and  daughters, 
were  in  Philip's  power ;  and  in  his  resolve  to  exclude  the 
Dauphin  from  the  throne  the  Duke  stooped  to  buy  English 
aid  by  giving  Catharine,  the  eldest  of  the  French  princesses, 
in  marriage  to  Henry,  by  conferring  on  him  the  Regency 
during  the  life  of  Charles,  and  by  recognizing  his  succession 
to  the  crown  at  that  sovereign's  death.  The  treaty  was  sol- 
emnly ratified  by  Charles  himself  in  a  conference  at  Troyes, 
and  Henry,  who  in  his  new  capacity  of  Regent  had  under- 
taken to  conquer  in  the  name  of  his  father-in-law  the  territory 


THE   HOUSE  OF   LANCASTER.      13&)   TO    1422.          848 

held  by  the  Dauphin,  reduced  the  towns  of  the  Upper  Seine 
and  entered  Paris  in  triumph  side  by  side  with  the  king. 
The  States-General  of  the  realm  were  solemnly  convened  to 
the  capital ;  and  strange  as  the  provisions  of  the  Treaty  of 
Troyes  must  have  seemed,  they  were  confirmed  without  a 
murmur,  and  Henry  was  formally  recognized  as  the  future 
sovereign  of  France.  A  defeat  of  his  brother  Clarence  in 
Anjou  called  him  back  to  the  war.  His  reappearance  in  the 
field  was  marked  by  the  capture  of  Dreux,  and  a  repulse  be- 
fore Orleans  was  redeemed  by  his  success  in  the  long  and  ob- 
stinate siege  of  Meaux.  At  no  time  had  the  fortunes  of 
Henry  reached  a  higher  pitch  than  at  the  moment  when  he 
felt  the  touch  of  death.  But  the  rapidity  of  his  disease 
baffled  the  skill  of  physicians,  and  with  a  strangely  charac- 
teristic regret  that  he  had  not  lived  to  achieve  the  conquest 
of  Jerusalem,  the  great  conqueror  passed  away. 


344  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 


CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  NEW  MONARCHY. 

1423—1540. 
Section  I.— Joan  of  Arc.    1433—1451. 

[Authorities.— The  "Wars  of  the  English  in  France,"  and  Blondel's  work  ''Da 
Reductione  Normanniae,"  both  published  by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls,  give  ample 
information  on  the  military  side  of  this  period.  Monstrelet  remains  our  chief 
source  of  knowledge  on  the  French  side.  The  "  Proces  de  Jeanne  d'Arc  "  (pub- 
lished by  the  Societe  de  1'Histoire  de  France)  is  the  only  real  authority  for  her 
history.  For  English  affairs  we  are  reduced  to  the  meager  accounts  of  William 
of  Worcester,  of  tha  Continuator  of  tha  Crowland  Chronicl**,  and  of  Fabyan. 
Fabyan,  a  London  Alderman  with  a  strong  bias  in  favor  of  the  House  of  Lancaster, 
is  useful  for  London  only.  The  Continuator  is  one  of  the  best  of  his  class,  and 
though  connected  with  the  House  of  York,  the  date  of  his  work,  which  appeared 
soon  after  Bosworth  Field,  makes  him  fairly  impartial ;  but  he  is  sketchy  and  de- 
ficient in  actual  facts.  The  more  copious  narrative  of  Polydore  Vergil  is  far 
superior  to  these  in  literary  ability,  but  of  later  date  and  strongly  Lancastrian  in 
tone.  The  Rolls  of  Parliament  and  Rymer's  "  Foedera  "  are  of  high  value. 
Among  modern  writers  M.  Michelet,  in  his  "History  of  France"  (vol.  v.),  has 
given  a  portrait  of  the  Maid  of  Orleans  at  once  exact  and  full  of  a  tender  poetry. 
Lord  Brougham  ("  England  under  the  House  of  Lancaster  ")  is  still  useful  on 
constitutional  points.] 

[Dr.  Stubbs'  '•  Constitutional  History,"  vol.  iii.,  published  since  these  pages  were 
written,  illustrates  this  period.  —  Ed.] 

AT  the  moment  when  death  so  suddenly  stayed  his  course 
the  greatness  of  Henry  the  Fifth  had  reached  its  highest 
point.  He  had  won  the  Church  by  his  orthodoxy,  the  nobles 
by  his  warlike  prowess,  the  whole  people  by  his  revival  of 
the  glories  of  Crecj  and  Poitiers.  In  France  his  cool  policy 
had  transformed  him  from  a  foreign  conqueror  into  a  legal 
heir  to  the  crown  ;  his  title  of  Regent  and  of  successor  to 
the  throne  rested  on  the  formal  recognition  of  the  estates  of 
the  realm  ;  and  his  progress  to  the  very  moment  of  his  death 
promised  a  speedy  mastery  of  the  whole  country. 

But  the  glory  of  Agincourt  and  the  genius  of  Henry  the 
Fifth  hardly  veiled  at  the  close  of  his  reign  the  weakness 

Disfran-     an^  humiliation  of  the  Crown  when  the  succession 

ch'sement   passed  to  his  infant  son.     The  long  minority  of 

of  the       Henry  the  Sixth,  who  was  a  boy  of  nine  months 

)ns>    old  at  his  father's  death,  as  well  as  the  personal 


JOAN   OF   AEG.      1422  TO    1451.  845 

weakness  which  marked  his  after-rule,  left  the  House  of 
Lancaster  at  the  mercy  of  the  Parliament.  But  the  Parlia- 
ment was  fast  dying  down  into  a  mere  representation  of  the 
baronage  and  the  great  landowners.  The  Commons  indeed 
retained  the  right  of  granting  and  controlling  subsidies,  of 
joining  in  all  statutory  enactments,  and  of  impeaching  minis- 
ters. But  the  Lower  House  was  ceasing  to  be  a  real  repre- 
sentative of  the  "Commons"  whose  name  it  bore.  The 
borough  franchise  was  suffering  from  the  general  tendency 
to  restriction  and  privilege  which  in  the  bulk  of  towns  was 
soon  to  reduce  it  to  a  mere  mockery.  Up  to  this  time  all 
freemen  settling  in  a  borough  and  paying  their  dues  to  it 
became  by  the  mere  settlement  its  burgesses  ;  but  from  the 
reign  of  Henry  the  Sixth  this  largeness  of  borough  life  was 
roughly  curtailed.  The  trade  companies  which  vindicated 
civic  freedom  from  the  tyranny  of  the  older  merchant  gilds 
themselves  tended  to  become  a  narrow  and  exclusive  oligarchy. 
Most  of  the  boroughs  had  by  this  time  acquired  civic  property, 
and  it  was  with  the  aim  of  securing  their  own  enjoyment  of 
this  against  any  share  of  it  by  "  strangers"  that  the  existing 
burgesses,  for  the  most  part,  procured  charters  of  incorpora- 
tion from  the  Crown,  which  turned  them  into  a  close  body, 
and  excluded  from  their  number  all  who  were  not  burgesses 
by  birth  or  who  failed  henceforth  to  purchase  their  right  of 
entrance  by  a  long  apprenticeship.  In  addition  to  this  nar- 
rowing of  the  burgess  body,  the  internal  government  of  the 
boroughs  had  almost  universally  passed,  since  the  failure  of 
the  Communal  movement  in  the  thirteenth  century,  from 
the  free  gathering  of  the  citizens  in  borough-mote  into  the 
hands  of  Common  Councils,  either  self-elected  or  elected  by 
the  wealthier  burgesses  ;  and  it  was  to  these  councils,  or  to 
a  yet  more  restricted  number  of  "  select  men  "  belonging  to 
them,  that  clauses  in  the  new  charters  generally  confined  the 
right  of  choosing  their  representatives  in  Parliament.  It  was 
with  this  restriction  that  the  long  process  of  degradation 
began  which  ended  in  reducing  the  representation  of  our 
boroughs  to  a  mere  mockery.  Great  nobles,  neighboring 
landowners,  the  crown  itself  seized  on  the  boroughs  as  their 
prey,  and  dictated  the  choice  of  their  representatives.  Cor- 
ruption did  whatever  force  failed  to  do  ;  and  from  the  Wars 
of  the  Hoses  to  the  days  of  Pitt  the  voice  of  the  people  had 


34ti  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

to  be  looked  for,  not  in  the  members  for  the  towns,  but  in 
the  knights  of  the  counties.  The  restriction  of  the  county 
franchise  on  the  other  hand  was  the  direct  work  of  the  Par- 
liament itself.  Economic  changes  were  fast  widening  the 
franchise  in  the  counties.  The  number  of  freeholders  in- 
creased with  the  subdivision  of  estates  and  the  social  changes 
winch  we  have  already  examined,  while  the  increase  of  inde- 
pendence was  marked  by  the '''riots  and  divisions  between 
the  gentlemen  and  other  people/'  which  the  statesmen  of 
the  day  attributed  to  the  excessive  number  of  the  voters. 
In  many  counties  the  power  of  the  great  lords  undoubtedly 
enabled  them  to  control  elections  through  the  number  of  their 
retainers.  In  Cade's  revolt  the  Kentishmen  complained  that 
"  the  people  of  the  shire  are  not  allowed  to  have  their  free 
elections  in  the  choosing  of  knights  for  the  shire,  but  letters 
have  been  sent  from  divers  estates  to  the  great  nobles  of  the 
county,  the  which  enforceth  their  tenants  and  other  people 
by  force  to  choose  other  persons  than  the  common  will  is." 
It  was  primarily  to  check  this  abuse  that  a  statute  of  the 
reign  of  Henry  the  Sixth  restricted  in  1430  the  right  of  voting 
in  shires  to  freeholders  holding  land  worth  forty  shillings 
(a  sum  equal  in  our  money  to  at  least  twenty  pounds)  a  year, 
and  representing  a  far  higher  proportional  income  at  the 
present  time.  This  "  great  disfranchising  statute,"  as  it  has 
been  justly  termed,  was  aimed,  in  its  own  words,  against 
voters  "of  no  value,  whereof  every  of  them  pretended  to 
have  a  voice  equivalent  with  the  more  worthy  knights  and 
esquires  dwelling  within  the  same  counties."  But  in  actual 
working  the  statute  was  interpreted  in  a  far  more  destructive 
fashion  than  its  words  were  intended  to  convey.  Up  to  this 
time  all  suitors  who  found  themselves  at  the  Sheriff's  Court 
had  voted  without  question  for  the  Knight  of  the  Shire,  but 
by  the  new  statute  the  great  bulk  of  the  existing  voters, 
every  leaseholder  and  every  copyholder,  found  themselves 
implicitly  deprived  of  their  franchise.  A  later  statute,  which 
seems,  however,  to  have  had  no  practical  effect,  showed  the 
aristocratic  temper,  as  well  as  the  social  changes  against 
which  it  struggled,  in  its  requirement  that  every  Knight  of 
the  Shire  should  be  "  a  gentleman  born." 

The  death  of  Henry  the  Fifth  revealed  in  its  bare  reality 
the  secret  of  power.     The  whole  of  the  royal  authority  veated 


JOAN  OF  ARC.     1422  TO  1451.  347 

without  a  struggle  in  a  council  composed  of  great  lords  and 
Churchmen  representing  the  baronage,  at  whose  head  stood 
Henry  Beaufort,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  a  legi-  England 
tirnated  son  of  John  of  Gaunt  by  his  mistress  under  the 
Catharine  Swynford.  In  the-presence  of  Lollardry  Nobles, 
and  socialism,  the  Church  had  at  this  time  ceased  to  be  a  great 
political  power  and  sunk  into  a  mere  section  of  the  landed 
aristocracy.  Its  one  aim  was  to  preserve  its  enormous 
wealth,  which  was  threatened  at  once  by  the  hatred  of  the 
heretics  and  by  the  greed  of  the  nobles.  Lollardry  still  lived, 
in  spite  of  the  steady  persecution,  as  a  spirit  of  religious  and 
moral  revolt ;  and  nine  years  after  the  young  king's  acces- 
sion we  find  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  traversing  England  with 
men-at-arms  for  the  purpose  of  repressing  its  risings  and 
hindering  the  circulation  of  its  invectives  against  the  clergy. 
The  violence  and  anarchy  which  had  always  clung  like  a  taint 
to  the  baronage  had  received  a  new  impulse  from  the  war 
with  France.  Long  before  the  struggle  was  over  it  had  done 
its  fatal  work  on  the  mood  of  the  English  noble.  His  aim 
had  become  little  more  than  a  lust  for  gold,  a  longing  after 
plunder,  after  the  pillage  of  farms,  the  sack  of  cities,  the 
ransom  of  captives.  So  intense  was  the  greed  of  gain  that 
only  a  threat  of  death  could  keep  the  fighting  men  in  their 
ranks,  and  the  results  of  victory  after  victory  were  lost  by 
the  anxiety  of  the  conquerors  to  deposit  their  plunder  and 
captives  safely  at  home.  The  moment  the  firm  hand  of 
great  leaders  such  as  Henry  the  Fifth  or  Bedford,  was  re- 
moved, the  war  died  down  into  mere  massacre  and  brigand- 
age. "  If  God  had  been  a  captain  nowadays,'*  exclaimed  a 
French  general,  "  He  would  have  turned  marauder."  The 
nobles  were  as  lawless  and  dissolute  at  home  as  they  were 
greedy  and  cruel  abroad.  The  Parliaments,  which  became 
mere  sittings  of  their  retainers  and  partizans,  were  like 
armed  camps  to  which  the  great  lords  came  with  small  armies 
at  their  backs.  That  of  1426  received  its  name  of  the  "  Club 
Parliament/'  from  the  fact  that  when  arms  were  prohibited 
the  retainers  of  the  barons  appeared  with  clubs  on  their 
shoulders.  When  clubs  were  forbidden,  they  hid  stones  and 
balls  of  lead  in  their  clothes.  The  dissoluteness  against 
which  Lollardry  had  raised  its  great  moral  protest  reigned 
now  without  a  check.  A  gleam  of  intellectual  light  was 


348  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

breaking  on  the  darkness  of  the  time,  but  only  to  reveal  its 
hideous  combination  of  mental  energy  with  moral  worthless- 
ness.  The  Duke  of  Gloucester,  whose  love  of  letters  was 
shown  in  the  noble  library  he  collected,  was  the  most  selfish 
and  profligate  prince  of  his  day.  The  Earl  of  Worcester,  a 
patron  of  Caxton,  and  one  of  the  earliest  scholars  of  the  Re- 
vival of  Letters,  earned  his  title  of  "  butcher  "  by  tho  cruelty 
which  raised  him  to  a  preeminence  of  infamy  among  the 
bloodstained  leaders  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  All  spiritual 
life  seemed  to  have  been  trodden  out  in  the  ruin  of  the 
Lollards.  Never  had  English  literature  fallen  so  low.  A 
few  tedious  moralists  alone  preserved  the  name  of  poetry. 
History  died  down  into  the  barest  and  most  worthless  frag- 
ments and  annals.  Even  the  religious  enthusiasm  of  the 
people  seemed  to  have  spent  itself  or  to  have  been  crushed 
out  by  the  bishop's  courts.  The  one  belief  of  the  time  was 
in  sorcery  and  magic.  Eleanor  Cobham,  the  wife  of  the 
Duke  of  Gloucester,  was  convicted  of  having  practised  magic 
against  the  king's  life  with  a  priest  and  condemned  to  do 
penance  in  the  streets  of  London.  The  mist  which  wrapped 
the  battle-field  of  Barnet  was  attributed  to  the  incantations 
of  Friar  Bungay.  The  one  pure  figure  which  rises  out  of  the 
greed,  the  lust,  the  selfishness,  and  unbelief  of  the  time,  the 
figure  of  Joan  of  Arc,  was  regarded  by  the  doctors  and  priests 
who  judged  her  as  that  of  a  sorceress. 

Jeanne  d'Arc  was  the  child  of  a  laborer  of  Domr6my,  a 

little  village   in  the  neighborhood  of  Vaucouleurs  on   the 

borders  of  Lorraine  and  Champagne.     Just  with- 

Joan  of  ouf.  j.jie  (jo^age  where  she  was  born  began  the 
great  woods  of  the  Vosges,  where  the  children  of 
Domremy  drank  in  poetry  and  legend  from  fairy  ring  and 
haunted  well,  hung  their  flower  garlands  on  the  sacred  trees, 
and  sang  songs  to  the  "  good  people  "  who  might  not  drink 
of  the  fountain  because  of  their  sins.  Jeanne  loved  the 
forest  ;  its  birds  and  beasts  came  lovingly  to  her  at  her  child- 
ish call.  But  at  home  men  saw  nothing  in  her  but  "  a  good 
girl,  simple  and  pleasant  in  her  ways/'  spinning  and  sewing 
by  her  mother's  side  while  the  other  girls  went  to  the  fields, 
tender  to  the  poor  and  sick,  fond  of  church,  and  listening  to 
the  church  bell  with  a  dreamy  passion  of  delight  which  never 
left  her.  The  quiet  life  was  soon  broken  by  the  storm  of 


JOAN  OF  ARC.    1422  TO  1451.  349 

war  as  it  at  last  came  home  to  Domr6my.  The  death  of 
King  Charles,  which  followed  hdrd  on  that  of  Henry  tne 
Fifth,  brought  little  change.  The  Dauphin  at  once  pro- 
claimed himself  Charles  the  Seventh  of  France  ;  but  Henry 
the  Sixth  was  owned  as  Sovereign  over  the  whole  of  the 
territory  which  Charles  had  actually  ruled  ;  and  the  incur- 
sions which  the  partizans  of  Charles,  now  reinforced  by  Lom- 
bard soldiers,  from  the  Milanese  and  by  four  thousand  Scots 
under  the  Earl  of  Douglas,  made  with  fresh  vigor  across  the 
Loire  were  easily  repulsed  by  Duke  John  of  Bedford,  the  late 
king's  brother,  who  had  been  named  in  his  will  Regent  of 
France.  In  genius  for  war  as  in  political  capacity  John  was 
hardly  inferior  to  Henry  himself.  Drawing  closer  by  marriage 
and  patient  diplomacy  his  alliances  with  the  Dukes  of  Bur- 
gundy and  Britanny,  he  completed  the  conquest  of  Northern 
France,  secured  his  communications  with  Normandy  by  the 
capture  of  Meulan,  made  himself  master  of  the  line  of  the 
Youne  by  a  victory  near  Auxerre,  and  pushed  forward  into 
the  country  near  Mdcon.  It  was  to  arrest  his  progress 
that  the  Constable  of  Buchan  advanced  boldly  from  the 
Loire  to  the  very  borders  of  Normandy  and  attacked  the 
English  army  at  Verneuil.  But  a  repulse  hardly  less  disas- 
trous than  that  of  Aginconrt  left  a  third  of  the  French 
knighthood  on  the  field  ;  and  the  Regent  T.vas  preparing  to 
cross  the  Loire  when  he  was  hindered  by  the  intrigues  of  his 
brother  the  Duke  of  Gloucester.  The  nomination  of  Glouces- 
ter to  the  Regency  in  England  by  the  will  of  the  late  king 
had  been  set  aside  by  the  Council,  and  sick  of  the  powerless 
Protectorate  with  which  they  had  invested  him,  the  Duke 
sought  a  new  opening  for  his  restless  ambition  in  the  Nether- 
lands, where  he  supported  the  claims  of  Jacqueline,  the 
Countess  in  her  own  right  of  Holland  and  Hainault,  whom 
he  had  married  on  her  divorce  from  the  Duke  of  Brabant. 
His  enterprise  roused  the  jealousy  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy, 
who  regarded  himself  as  heir  to  the  Duke  of  .Brabant,  and 
the  efforts  of  Bedford  were  paralyzed  by  the  withdrawal  of 
his  Burgundian  allies  as  they  marched  northward  to  combat 
his  brother.  Though  Gloucester  soon  returned  to  England, 
the  ruinous  struggle  went  on  for  three  years,  during  which 
Bedford  was  forced  to  remain  simply  on  the  defensive,  till 
the  cessation  of  war  again  restored  to  him  the  aid  of  Burgundy. 


350  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Strife  at  home  between  Gloucester  and  Beaufort  had  been 
even  more  fatal  in  diverting  the  supplies  of  men  and  money 
needed  for  the  war  in  France,  but  with  temporary  quiet  in  Eng- 
land and  peace  in  Holland,  Bedford  was  once  more  able  to 
push  forward  to  the  conquest  of  the  South.  The  delay,  how- 
ever, brought  little  help  to  France,  and  Charles  saw  Orleans 
invested  by  ten  thousand  of  the  allies  without  power  to  march 
to  its  relief.  The  war  had  long  since  reached  the  borders  of 
Lorraine.  The  north  of  France,  indeed,  was  being  fast  re- 
duced to  a  desert.  The  husbandmen  fled  for  refuge  to  the 
towns,  till  these  in  fear  of  famine  shut  their  gates  against 
them.  Then  in  their  despair  they  threw  themselves  into  the 
woods  and  beca*me  brigands  in  their  turn.  So  terrible  was 
the  devastation,  that  two  hostile  bodies  of  troops  at  one  time 
failed  even  to  find  one  another  in  the  desolate  Beauce.  The 
towns  were  in  hardly  better  case,  for  misery  and  disease 
killed  a  hundred  thousand  people  in  Paris  alone.  As  the 
outcasts  and  wounded  passed  by  Dornremy  the  young  peasant 
girl  gave  them  her  Tied  and  nursed  them  in  their  sickness. 
Her  whole  nature  summed  itself  up  in  one  absorbing  passion  : 
she  "  had  pity/'  to  use  the  phrase  forever  on  her  lip,  "  on 
the  fair  realm  of  France."  As  her  passion  grew  she  recalled 
old  prophecies  that  a  maid  from  the  Lorraine  border  should 
save  the  land  ;  she  saw  visions  ;  St.  Michael  appeared  to  her 
in  a  flood  of  blinding  light,  and  bade  her  go  to  the  help  of 
the  king  and  restore  him  to  his  realm.  "  Messire,"  answered 
the  girl,  "  I  am  but  a  poor  maiden  ;  I  know  not  how  to  ride 
to  the  wars,  or  to  lead  men-at-arms."  The  archangel  re- 
turned to  give  her  courage,  and  to  tell  her  of  "  the  pity  " 
that  there  was  in  heaven  for  the  fair  realm  of  France.  The 
girl  wept,  and  longed  that  the  angels  who  appeared  to 
her  would  carry  her  away,  but  her  mission  was  clear.  It  was 
in  vain  that  her  father,  when  he  heard  her  purpose,  swore  to 
drown  her  ero  she  should  go  to  the  field  with  men-at-arms. 
It  was  in  vain  that  the  priest,  the  wise  people  of  the  village, 
the  captain  of  Vaucouleurs,  doubted  and  refused  to  aid  her. 
"  I  must  go  to  the  king,"  persisted  the  peasant  girl,  "  even 
if  I  wear  my  limbs  to  the  very  knees."  "  I  had  far  rather 
rest  and  spin  by  my  mother's  side,"  she  pleaded  with  a  touch- 
ing pathos,  "  for  this  is  no  work  of  my  choosing,  but  I  must 
go  and  do  it,  for  my  Lord  wills  it."  "  And  who,"  they 


JOAN  OF  ARC.   1422  TO  1451.         851 

asked,  "is  yonr  Lord  ?"  "He  is  God."  Words  such  as 
these  touched  the  rough  captain  at  last :  he  took  Jeanne  by 
the  hand  and  swore  to  lead  her  to  the  king.  'When  she 
reached  Chinonslie  found  hesitation  and  doubt.  The  theolo- 
gians proved  from  their  books  that  they  ought  not  to  believe 
her.  "  There  is  more  in  God's  book  than  in  yours/'  Jeanne 
answered  simply.  At  last  Charles  received  her  in  the  midst 
of  a  throng  of  nobles  and  soldiers.  "  Gentle  Dauphin/*  said 
the  girl,  "  my  name  is  Jeanne  the  Maid.  The  Heavenly 
King  sends  me  to  tell  you  that  you  shall  be  anointed  and 
crowned  in  the  town  of  Rheims,  and  you  shall  be  lieutenant 
of  the  Heavenly  King  who  is  the  King  of  France." 

Orleans  had  already  been  driven  by  famine  to  offers  of  sur- 
render when  Jeanne  appeared  in  the  French  Court.  Charles 
had  done  nothing  for  its  aid  but  shut  himself  up  ^ 
at  Chinon  and  weep  helplessly.  The  long  series  of  Belief  of 
English  victories  had  in  fact  so  demoralized  the  Orleans. 
French  soldiery  that  a  mere  detachment  of  archers  under  Sir 
John  Fastolfe  had  repulsed  an  army,  in  what  was  called  the 
"  Battle  of  the  Herrings,"  and  conducted  the  convoy  of  pro- 
visions to  which  it  owed  its  name  in  triumph  into  the  camp 
before  Orleans.  Only  three  thousand  Englishmen  remained 
there  in  the  trenches  after  a  new  withdrawal  of  their  Bur- 
gundian  allies,  but  though  the  town  swarmed  with  men-at- 
arms  not  a  single  sally  had  been  ventured  upon  during  the 
six  months'  siege.  The  success  however  of  the  handful  of 
English  besiegers  depended  wholly  on  the  spell  of  terror 
which  they  had  cast  over  France,  and  the  appearance  of 
Jeanne  at  once  broke  the  spell.  The  girl  was  in  her  eight- 
eenth year,  tall,  finely  formed,  with  all  the  vigor  and 
activity  of  her  peasant  rearing,  able  to  stay  from  dawn  to 
nightfall  on  horseback  without  meat  or  drink.  As  she 
mounted  her  charger,  clad  in  white  armor  from  head  to 
foot,  with  the  great  white  banner  studded  with  fleur-de-lys 
waving  over  her  head,  she  seemed  "  a  thing  wholly  divine, 
whether  to  see  or  hear."  The  ten  thousand  men-at-arms  who 
followed  her  from  Blois,  rough  plunderers  whose  only  prayer 
was  that  of  La  Hire,  "  Sire  Dieu,  I  pray  you  to  do  for  La  Hire 
what  La  Hire  would  do  for  you,  were  you  captain-at-armsand 
he  God,"  left  off  their  oaths  and  foul  living  at  her  word  and 
gnthered  round  the  altars  on  their  march.  Her  shrewd  peas- 


352  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE, 

ant  humor  helped  her  to  manage  the  wild  soldiery,  and  her 
followers  laughed  over  their  camp-fires  at  the  old  warrior  who 
had  been  so  puzzled  by  her  prohibition  of  oaths  that  she  suf- 
fered him  still  to  swear  by  his  bdton.  In  the  midst  of  her 
enthusiasm  her  good  sense  never  left  her.  The  people 
crowded  round  her  as  she  rode  along,  praying  her  to  work 
miracles,  and  bringing  crosses  and  chaplets  to  be  blest  by  her 
touch.  "Touch  them  yourself,"  she  said  to  an  old  Dame 
Margaret ;  "your  touch  will  be  just  as  good  as  mine."  But 
her  faith  in  her  mission  remained  as  firm  as  ever.  "  The 
Maid  prays  and  requires  you,"  she  wrote  to  Bedford,  "  to 
work  no  more  distraction  in  France,  but  to  come  in  her 
company  to  rescue  the  Holy  Sepulcher  from  the  Turk."  "I 
bring  yon,"  she  told  Dunois  when  he  sallied  out  of  Orleans 
to  meet  her,  '•'  the  best  aid  ever  sent  to  any  one,  the  aid  of 
the  King  of  Heaven.'*  The  besiegers  looked  on  overawed  as 
she  entered  Orleans,  and,  riding  round  the  walls,  bade  the 
people  look  fearlessly  on  the  dreaded  forts  which  surrounded 
thorn.  Her  enthusiasm  drove  the  hesitating  generals  to 
engage  the  handful  of  besiegers,  and  the  enormous  dispro- 
portion of  forces  at  once  made  itself  felt.  Fort  after  fort 
was  taken,  till  only  the  strongest  remained,  and  then  the 
council  of  war  resolved  to  adjourn  the  attack.  "You  have 
taken  your  counsel,"  replied  Jeanne,  "and  I  take  mine." 
Placing  herself  at  the  head  of  the  men-at-arms,  she  ordered 
the  gates  to  be  thrown  open,  and  led  them  against  the  fort. 
Few  as  they  were,  the  English  fought  desperately,  and  the 
Maid,  who  had  fallen  wounded  while  endeavoring  to  scale 
its  walls,  was  borne  into  a  vineyard,  while  Dunois  sounded 
the  retreat.  "  Wait  a  while  !"  the  girl  imperiously  pleaded, 
"  eat  and  drink  !  so  soon  as  my  standard  touches  the  wall  you 
shall  enter  the  fort."  It  touched,  and  the  assailants  burst  in. 
On  the  next  day  the  siege  was  abandoned,  and  the  force 
which  had  conducted  it  withdrew  in  good  order  to  the  north. 
In  the  midst  of  her  triumph  Jeanne  still  remained  the  pure, 
tender-hearted  peasant  girl  of  the  Vosges.  Her  first  visit  as 
she  entered  Orleans  was  to  the  great  church,  and  there,  as 
she  knelt  at  mass,  she  wept  in  such  a  passion  of  devotion 
that  "all  the  people  wept  with  her."  Her  tears  burst  forth 
afresh  at  her  first  sight  of  bloodshed  and  of  the  corpses  strewn 
over  the  battle-field.  She  grew  frightened  at  her  first 


Tin-  Muid  of  Orleans  wounded. 


JOAN  OF  ARC.    1422  TO  1451.  353 

wound,  and  only  threw  off  the  touch  of  womanly  fear  when 
she  heard  the  signal  for  retreat.  Yet  more  womanly  was  the 
purity  with  which  she  passed  through  the  brutal  warriors  of 
a  medieval  camp.  It  was  her  care  for  her  honor  that  had 
led  her  to  clothe  herself  in  a  soldier's  dress.  She  wept  hot 
tears  when  told  of  the  foul  taunts  of  the  English,  and  called 
passionately  on  God  to  witness  her  chastity.  "  Yield  thee, 
yield  thee,  Glasdale,"  she  cried  to  the  English  warrior  whose 
insults  had  been  foulest,  as  he  fell  wounded  at  her  feet,  "you 
called  me  harlot  !  I  have  great  pity  on  your  soul."  But  all 
thought  of  herself  was  lost  in  the  thought  of  her  mission. 
It  was  in  vain  that  the  French  generals  strove  to  remain  on 
the  Loire.  Jeanne  was  resolute  to  complete  her  task,  and 
while  the  English  remained  panic-stricken  around  Paris  the 
army  followed  her  from  Gien  through  Troyes,  growing  in 
number  as  it  advanced,  till  it  reached  the  gates  of  Rheims. 
"With  the  coronation  of  Charles,  the  Maid  felt  her  errand  to 
be  over.  "  0  gentle  king,  the  pleasure  of  God  is  done,"  she 
cried,  as  she  flung  herself  at  the  feet  of  Charles  the  Seventh 
and  asked  leave  to  go  home.  "  Would  it  were  His  pleasure," 
she  pleaded  with  the  Archbishop  as  he  forced  her  to  remain, 
"  that  I  might  go  and  keep  sheep  once  more  with  my  sisters 
and  my  brothers  :  they  would  be  so  glad  to  see  me  again  ! " 

The  policy  of  the  French  Court  detained  her  while  the 
jities  of  the  north  of  France  opened  their  gates  to  the  newly- 
consecrated  king.  Bedford,  however,  who  had 
heen  left  without  money  or  men,  had  now  received 
enforcements,  and  Charles,  after  a  repulse  before 
he  walls  of  Paris,  fell  back  behind  the  Loire  ;  while  the 
towns  on  the  Oise  submitted  again  to  the  Duke  of  Burgundy. 
~L!  this  later  struggle  Jeanne  fought  with  her  usual  bravery, 
but  with  the  fatal  consciousness  that  her  mission  was  at  an 
end,  and  during  the  defense  of  Compiegne  she  fell  into  the 
power  of  the  Bastard,  of  Vend6me,  to  be  sold  by  her  captor 
into  the  hands  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  and  by  the  Duke 
into  the  hands  of  the  English.  To  the  English  her  triumphs 
were  victories  of  sorcery,  and  after  a  year's  imprisonment  she 
was  brought  to  trial  on  a  charge  of  heresy  before  an  ecclesi- 
astical court  with  the  Bishop  of  Beauvais  at  its  head. 
Throughout  the  long  process  which  followed  every  art  was 
employed  to  entangle  her  in  her  talk.  But  the  simple 


854  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

shrewdness  of  the  peasant  girl  foiled  the  efforts  of  her  judges. 
"Do  you  believe,"  they  asked,  "that  you  are  in  a  state  of 
grace?"  "  If  lam  not,"  she  replied,  "God  will  put  me 
in  it.  If  I  am,  God  will  keep  me  in  it."  Her  capture,  they 
argued,  showed  that  God  had  forsaken  her.  "  Since  it  has 
pleased  God  that  1  should  be  taken,*'  she  answered  meekly, 
"  it  is  for  the  best."  "  Will  you  submit,"  they  demanded  at 
last,  "  to  the  judgment  of  the  Church  Militant  ?  "  "I  have 
come  to  the  king  of  France,"  Jeanne  replied,  "by  commis- 
sion from  God  and  from  the  Church  Triumphant  above  :  to 
that  Church  I  submit."  "  I  had  far  rather  die,"  she  ended, 
passionately,  "  than  renounce  what  I  have  done  by  my  Lord's 
command."  They  deprived  her  of  mass.  "  Our  Lord  can 
make  me  hear  it  without  your  aid,"  she  said,  weeping. 
"Do  your  voices,"  asked  the  judges,  "forbid  you  to  submit 
to  the*  Church  and  the  Pope  ?'"  "Ah,  no  !  Our  Ldrd  first 
served."  Sick,  and  deprived  of  all  religious  aid,  it  was  no 
wonder  that  as  the  long  trial  dragged  on  and  question  followed 
question  Jeanne's  firmness  wavered.  On  the  charge  of  sor- 
cery and  diabolical  possession  she  still  appealed  firmly  to 
God.  "  I  hold  to  my  Judge,"  she  said,  as  her  earthly  judges 
gave  sentence  against  her,  "  to  the  King  of  Heaven  and 
Earth.  God  has  always  been  my  Lord  in  all  that  I  have  done. 
The  devil  has  never  had  power  over  me."  It  was  only  with 
a  view  to  be  delivered  from  the  military  prison  and  trans- 
ferred to  the  prisons  of  the  Church  that  she  consented  to  a 
formal  adjuration  of  heresy.  She  feared  in  fact  among  the 
English  soldiery  those  outrages  to  her  honor,  to  guard 
against  which  she  had  from  the  first  assumed  the  dress  of 
a  man.  In  the  eyes  of  the  Church  her  dress  was  a  crime  and 
she  abandoned  it ;  but  a  renewed  insult  forced  her  to  resume 
the  one  safeguard  left  her,  and  the  return  to  it  was  treated 
as  a  relapse  into  heresy  which  doomed  her  to  death.  A  great 
pile  was  raised  in  the  market-place  of  Rouen  where  her 
statue  stands  now.  Even  the  brutal  soldiers  who  snatched 
the  hated  "  witch  "from  the  hands  of  the  clergy  and  hurried 
her  to  her  doom  were  hushed  as  she  reached  the  stake.  One 
indeed  passed  to  her  a  rough  cross  he  had  made  from  a  stick 
he  held,  and  she  clasped  it  to  her  bosom.  "  Oh  !  Rouen, 
Rouen,"  she  was  heard  to  murmur,  as  her  eyes  ranged  over 
the  city  from  the  lofty  scaffold,  "  I  have  great  fear  lest  you 


JOAN  OF  ARC.     1422  TO  1451.  855 

suffer  for  my  death."  "  Yes  ! "  my  voices  were  of  God  I "  she 
suddenly  cried  as  the  last  moment  came  ;  '•'  they  have  never 
deceived  me  ! "  Soon  the  flumes  reached  her,  the  girl's  head 
sank  on  her  breast,  there  was  one  cry  of  "Jesus!" — "We 
are  lost,"  an  English  soldier  muttered  as  the  crowd  broke  up, 
"we  have  burned  a  saint." 

The  English  cause  was  indeed  irretrievably  lost.  In  spite 
of  a  pompous  coronation  of  the  boy-king  Henry  at  Paris, 
Bedford,  with  the  cool  wisdom,  of  his  temper, 
seems  to  have  abandoned  all  hope  of  permanently 
retaining  France,  and  to  have  fallen  back  on  his 
brother's  original  plan  of  securing  Normandy.  Henry's 
Court  was  established  for  a  year  at  Kouen,  a  university 
founded  at  Caen,  and  whatever  rapine  and  disorder  might  be 
permitted  elsewhere,  justice,  good  government,  and  security 
for  trade  were  steadily  maintained  through  the  favored 
provinces.  At  home,  Bedford  was  resolutely  backed  by  the 
Bishop  of  Winchester,  who  had  been  raised  in  1426  to  the 
rank  of  Cardinal,  and  who  now  again  governed  England 
through  the  Royal  Council  in  spite  of  the  fruitless  struggles 
of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester.  Even  when  he  had  been  ex- 
cluded from  the  Council  by  Gloucester's  intrigues,  Beaufort's 
immense  wealth  was  poured  without  stint  into  the  exhausted 
Treasury  till  his  loans  to  the  Crown  amounted  to  half-a- 
million  ;  and  he  had  unscrupulously  diverted  an  army  which 
he  had  raised  at  his  own  cost  for  the  Hussite  Crusade  in 
Bohemia  to  the  relief  of  Bedford  after  the  deliverance  of 
Orleans.  The  Cardinal's  diplomatic  ability  was  seen  in  the 
truces  he  wrung  from  Scotland,  and  in  his  personal  efforts  to 
prevent  the  reconciliation  of  Burgundy  with  France.  In 
1435  however  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  concluded  a  formal 
treaty  with  Charles  ;  and  his  desertion  was  followed  by  a  yet 
more  fatal  blow  to  the  English  cause  in  the  death  of  Bed- 
ford. Paris  rose  suddenly  against  its  English  garrison  and 
declared  for  King  Charles.  Henry's  dominion  shrank  at 
once  to  Normandy  and  the  outlying  fortresses  of  Picardy  and 
Maine.  But  reduced  as  they  were  to  a  mere  handful,  and 
fronted  by  a  whole  nation  in  arms,  the  English  soldiers 
struggled  on  with  as  desperate  a  bravery  as  in  their  da\s  of 
triumph.  Lord  Talbot,  the  most  daring  of  their  chiefs, 
forded  the  Somme  with  the  waters  up  to  his  chin  to  relieve 


HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Crotby.  and  threw  his  men  across  the  Oise  in  the  face  of  a 
French  army  to  relieve  Pontoise.  The  Duke  of  York,  who 
succeeded  Bedford  as  Regent,  by  his  abilities  stemmed  for  a 
time  the  tide  of  ill-fortune,  but  the  jealousy  shown  to  him  by 
the  king's  counselors  told  fatally  on  the  course  of  the  war. 
A  fresh  effort  for  peace  was  made  by  the  Earl  of  Suffolk,  who 
sWayed'the  Council  after  age  forced  Beaufort  to  retire  to 
Winchester,  and  who  negotiated  for  his  master  a  marriage 
with  Margaret,  the  daughter  of  Duke  Rene  of  Anjon.  Not 
only  Anjou,  of  which  England  possessed  nothing,  but  Maine 
the  bulwark  of  Normandy,  were  ceded  to  Duke  Rene  as  the 
price  of  a  match  which  Suffolk  regarded  as  the  prelude  to 
peace.  But  the  terms  of  the  treaty  and  the  delays  which 
still  averted  a  final  peace  gave  new  strength  to  the  war- party 
with  Gloucester  at  its  head.  The  danger  was  roughly  met. 
Gloucester  was  arrested  as  he  rode  to  Parliament  on  a  charge 
of  secret  conspiracy  ;  and  a  few  days  later  he  was  found  dead 
in  his  lodging.  But  the  difficulties  he  had  raised  foiled 
Suffolk  in  his  negotiations  ;  and  though. Charles  extorted  the 
surrender  of  Le  Mans  by  a  threat  of  war,  the  provisions  of 
the  treaty  remained  for  the  most  part  unfulfilled.  The 
struggle,  however,  now  became  a  hopeless  one.  In  two 
months  from  the  resumption  of  the  war  half  Normandy  was 
in  the  hands  of  Dunois ;  Rouen  rose  against  her  feeble 
garrison  and  threw  open  her  gates  to  Charles  ;  and  the  de- 
feat of  an  English  force  at  Fourmigny  was  the  signal  for 
revolt  throughout  the  rest  of  the  province.  The  surrender 
of  Cherbourg  in  1450  left  Henry  not  a"  foot  of  Norman 
ground,  and  the  next  year  the  last  fragment  of  the  Duchy 
of  Guienne  was  lost.  Gascony  indeed  once  more  turned  to 
the  English  Crown  on  the  landing  of  an  English  force  under 
Talbot,  Earl  of  Shrewsbury.  But  ere  the  twenty  thousand 
men  whose  levy  was  voted  by  Parliament  for  his  aid  could 
cross  the  channel  Shrewsbury  suddenly  found  himself  face 
to  face  with  the  whole  French  arrny.  His  men  were  mo\vn 
down  by  its  guns,  and  the  Earl  himself  left  dead  on  the 
field.  The  surrender  of  fortress  after  fortress  secured  the 
final  expulsion  of  the  English  from  the  soil  of  France.  The 
Hundred  Years'  "War  had  ended,  not  cnly  in  the  loss  of  the 
temporary  conquests  made  since  the  time  of  Ed \varcl  the 
Third,  with  the  exception  of  Calais,  but  iu  the  loss  of  the 


THE   WARS   OF  THE   ROSES.      1450  TO  1471.  857 

great  southern  province  which  had  remained  in  English 
hands  ever  since  the  marriage  of  its  Duchess,  Eleanor,  to 
Henry  the  Second,  and  in  the  building  up  of  France  into  a 
far  greater  power  than  it  had  over  been  before. 


Section  II. — The  Wars  of  the  Roses.    1450 — 1471. 

[Authorities.— No  period,  save  the  last,  is  scantier  in  historical  authorities.  We 
still  possess  William  of  Worcester,  Fabyan,  and  the  Crowland  Continuator,  and 
for  the  struggle  between  Warwick  and  Edward,  the  valuable  narrative  of  "  The 
Arrival  of  Edward  IV.,"  edited  for  the  Camden  Society,  which  may  be  taken  as 
the  official  account  on  the  royal  side.  '•  The  Paston  Letters  "  (edited  by  Mr. 
Gairdner)  are  the  first  instance  in  English  history  of  a  family  correspondence, 
and  throw  great  light  on  the  social  history  of  the  time.  Cade's  rising  has  been 
illustrated  in  two  papers,  lately  reprinted,  by  Mr.  Durrant  Cooper.  The  Rolls  of 
Parliament  are,  as  before,  of  the  highest  value.] 

The  ruinous  issue  of  the  great  struggle  with  France  roused 
England  to  a  burst  of  fury  against  the  wretched  government 
to  whose  weakness  and  credulity  it  attributed  its 
disasters.  Suffolk  was  impeached,  and  murdered 
as  he  crossed  the  sea  into  exile.  When  the 
Bishop  of  Chichester  was  sent  to  pay  the  sailors  at  Ports- 
mouth, and  strove  to  put  them  off  with  less  than  their  due, 
they  fell  on  him  and  slew  him.  In  Kent,  the  great  manu- 
facturing district  of  the  day,  seething  with  a  busy  popu- 
lation, and  especially  concerned  with  the  French  contests 
through  the  piracy  of  the  Cinque  Ports,  where  every  house 
showed  some  spoil  from  the  wars,  the  discontent  broke  into 
open  revolt.  The  rising  spread  from  Kent  over  Surrey  and 
Sussex.  A  military  levy  of  the  yeomen  of  the  three  shires 
was  organized  ;  the  insurgents  were  joined  by  more  than  a 
hundred  esquires  and  gentlemen,  and  two  great  landowners 
of  Sussex,  the  Abbot  of  Battle  and  the  Prior  of  Lewes, 
openly  favored  their  cause.  John  Cade,  a  soldier  of  some 
experience  in  the  French  wars,  took  the  significant  name  of 
Mortimer,  and  placed  himself  at  their  head  ;  and  the  army, 
now  twenty  thousand  men  strong,  marched  on  Black  heath. 
The  "  Complaint  of  the  Commons  of  Kent  "  which  they  laid 
bcfoie  the  Royal  Council,  is  of  high  value  in  the  light 
which  it  throws  on  the  condition  of  the  people.  Not  one  of 
the  demands  touches  on  religious  reform.  The  question  of 
villeinage  and  serfage  finds  no  place  in  the  "  Complaint"  of 


358  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

1450.  In  the  seventy  years  which  had  intervened  since  the 
last  peasant  rising,  villeinage  had  died  naturally  awaybetore 
the  progress  of  social  change.  The  Statutes  of  Apparel, 
which  from  this  time  encumber  the  Statute-Book,  show  in 
their  anxiety  to  curtail  the  dress  of  the  laborer  and  the 
farmer  the  progress  of  these  classes  in  comfort  and  wealth  ; 
and  from  the  language  of  the  statutes  themselves,  it  is  plain 
that  as  wages  rose  both  farmer  and  laborer  went  on  clothing 
themselves  better  in  spite  of  sumptuary  provisions.  With 
the  exception  of  a  demand  for  the  repeal  of  the  Statute  of 
Laborers,  the  program  of  the  Commons  was  now  not 
social,  but  political.  The  "  Complaint "  calls  for  adminis- 
trative arid  economical  reforms,  for  a  change  of  ministry,  a 
more  careful  expenditure  of  the  royal  revenue,  and  for  the 
restoration  of  freedom  of  election,  which  had  been  broken  in 
upon  by  the  interference  both  of  the  Crown  and  the  great 
landowners.  The  refusal  of  the  Council  to  receive  the 
"  Complaint"  was  followed  by  a  victory  of  the  Kentishmen 
over  the  royal  forces  at  Sevenoaks  ;  the  entry  of  the  insur- 
gents into  London,  coupled  with  the  execution  of  Lord  Say, 
the  most  unpopular  of  the  royal  ministers,  broke  the  ob- 
stinacy of  his  colleagues.  The  "Complaint"  was  received, 
pardons  were  granted  to  all  who  had  joined  in  the  rising  ; 
and  the  insurgents  dispersed  to  their  homes.  Cade,  who  had 
striven  in  vain  to  retain  them  in  arms,  sought  to  form  a 
new  force  by  throwing  open  the  jails  ;  but  his  men  quarreled, 
and  Cade  himself  was  slain  by  the  sheriff  of  Kent  as  he 
fled  into  Sussex.  The  "  Complaint"  was  quietly  laid  aside. 
No  attempt  was  made  to  redress  the  grievances  which  it 
stated,  and  the  main  object  of  popular  hate,  the  Duke  of 
Somerset,  took  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  Royal  Council. 

Beaufort,  Duke  of  Somerset,  as  the  grandson  of  John  of 

Gaunt  and  his  mistress  Catharine  Swynford,  was  the  repre- 

Yorkand    sentative  of  a  junior  branch   of 'the  House  of 

the  Beau-    Lancaster,  whose  claims  to  the  throne  Henry  IV. 

forts.       ha(j  barred  by  a  clause  in  the  Act  which  legiti- 

tiated  their  line,  but  whose  hopes  of  the  Crown  were  roused 

by  the  childlessness  of  Henry  VI.     He  found  a  rival  in  the 

Duke   of   York,  heir  of  the  houses  of  York,   of  Clarence,, 

and   of   Mortimer,  who   boasted   of  a  double  descent  from 

Edward   III.      In   addition   to   other   claims    which    York 


THE   WARS   OF  THE   ROSES.      1450   TO   1471.  359 

as  yet  refrained  from  urging,  he  claimed  as  descendant  of 
Edmund  of  Langley,  Edward's  fifth  son,  to  be  regarded  as 
heir  presumptive  to  the  throne.  Popular  favor  seems  to 
have  been  on  his  side,  but  in  1453  the  birth  of  the  king's 
son  promised  to  free  the  Crown  from  the  turmoil  of  warring 
factions  ;  Henry,  however,  at  the  same  time  sank  into  a 
state  of  idiotcy  which  made  his  rule  impossible,  and  York 
was  appointed  Protector  of  the  Realm.  But  on  Henry's 
recovery  the  Duke  of  Somerset,  who  had  been  impeached 
and  committed  to  the  Tower  by  his  rival,  was  restored  to 
power,  and  supported  with  singular  vigor  and  audacity  by 
the  queen.  York  at  once  took  up  arms,  and  backed  by  the 
Earls  of  Salisbury  and  Warwick,  the  heads  of  the  great 
House  of  Neville,  he  advanced  with  3,000  men  upon  St. 
Albans,  where  Henry  was  encamped.  A  successful  assault 
upon  the  town  was  crowned  by  the  death  of  Somerset ;  and 
a  return  of  the  king's  malady  brought  the  renewal  of  York's 
Protectorate.  Henry's  recovery,  however,  again  restored 
the  supremacy  of  the  House  of  Beaufort,  and  after  a  tem- 
porary reconciliation  between  the  two  parties  there  was  a 
fresh  outbreak  of  war.  Salisbury  defeated  Lord  Audley  at 
Bloreheath,  and  York  with  the  two  earls  raised  his  standard 
at  Ludlow.  The  king  marched  rapidly  on  the  insurgents, 
and  a  decisive  battle  was  only  averted  by  the  desertion  of  a 
part  of  the  Yorkist  army  and  the  disbanding  of  the  rest. 
The  Duke  himself  fled  to  Ireland,  the  earls  to  Calais,  while 
the  queen,  summoning  a  Parliament  at  Coventry,  pressed 
on  their  attainder.  But  the  check,  whatever  its  cause,  had 
been  merely  a  temporary  one.  In  the  following  Midsummer 
the  earls  again  landed  in  Kent,  and  backed  by  a  general 
rising  of  the  county,  entered  London  amidst  the  acclama- 
tions of  its  citizens.  The  royal  army  was  defeated  in  a 
hard-fought  action  at  Northampton,  Margaret  fled  to  Scot- 
land, and  Henry  was  left  a  prisoner  in  the  hands  of  the 
Duke  of  York. 

The  position  of  York  as  heir  presumptive  to  the  crown  by 
descent  from  Edmund  of  Langley  had  ceased  with  the  birth 
of  a  son  to  Henry  ;  but  the  victory  of  North-    TheWan 
ampton  no  sooner  raised  him  to  the  supreme  con-      of  the 
trol  of  affairs  than  he  ventured  to  assert  the  far      Boses. 
more  dangerous  claims  which  he  had  secretly  cherished,  and 


360  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

to  their  consciousness  of  which  was  owing  the  bitter  hostility 
of  Henry  and  his  queen.  As  the  descendant  of  Edmund  of 
Langley  he  stood  only  next  in  succession  to  the  House  of 
Lancaster,  but  as  the  descendant  of  Lionel,  the  elder  brother 
of  John  of  Gaunt,  he  stood  in  strict  hereditary  right  before 
it.  We  have  already  seen  how  the  claims  of  Lionel  had 
passed  to  the  House  of  Mortimer  ;  it  was  through  Anne,  the 
heiress  of  the  Mortimers,  who  had  wedded  his  father,  that 
they  passed  to  the  Duke.  There  was,  however,  no  consti- 
tutional ground  for  any  limitation  of  the  right  of  Parliament 
to  set  aside  an  elder  branch  in  favor  of  a  younger,  and  in  the 
Parliamentary  Act  which  placed  the  House  of  Lancaster  on 
the  throne  the  claim  of  the  House  of  Mortimer  had  been  de- 
liberately set  aside.  Possession,  too,  told  against  the  Yorkist 
pretensions.  To  modern  minds  the  best  reply  to  their  claim 
lay  in  the  words  used  at  a  later  time  by  Henry  himself.  "  My 
father  was  king  ;  his  father  also  was  king  ;  I  myself  have 
worn  the  crown,  forty  years  from  my  cradle  ;  you  have  all 
sworn  fealty  to  me  as  your  sovereign,  and  your  fathers  have 
done  the  like  to  mine.  How  then  can  my  right  be  dis- 
puted ?  "  Long  and  undisturbed  possession,  as  well  as  a  dis- 
tinctly legal  title  by  free  vote  of  Parliament,  was  in  favor  of 
the  House  of  Lancaster.  But  the  persecution  of  the  Lol- 
lards, the  interference  with  elections,  the  odium  of  the  war, 
the  shame  of  the  long  misgovernment,  told  fatally  against 
the  weak  and  imbecile  king,  whose  reign  had  been  a  long 
battle  of  contending  factions.  That  the  misrule  had  been 
serious  was  shown  by  the  attitude  of  the  commercial  class. 
It  \vus  the  rising  of  Kent,  the  great  manufacturing  district 
of  the  realm,  which  brought  about  the  victory  of  Northamp- 
ton. Throughout  the  struggle  which  followed,  London  and 
the  great  merchant  towns  were  steady  for  the  House  of  York. 
Zeal  for  the  Lancastrian  cause  was  found  only  in  Wales,  in 
northern  England,  and  in  the  southwestern  shires.  It  is 
absurd  to  suppose  that  the  shrewd  traders  of  Cheapside  were 
moved  by  an  abstract  question  of  hereditary  right,  or  that 
the  wild  Welshmen  believed  themselves  to  be  supporting  the 
right  of  Parliament  to  regulate  the  succession.  But  it  marks 
the  power  which  Parliament  had' now  gained  that  the  Duke 
of  York  felt  himself  compelled  to  convene  the  two  Houses, 
aiid  to  lay  his  claim  before  the  Lords  as  a  petition  of  right. 


THE   WARS   OF  THE   ROSES.      1450   TO    1471.  361 

Neither  oaths  nor  the  numerous  Acts  which  had  settled  and 
continued  the  right  to  the  crown  in  the  House  of  Lancaster 
could  destroy,  he  pleaded,  his  hereditary  claim.  The  baron- 
age received  the  petition  with  hardly  concealed  reluctance, 
and  solved  the  question,  as  they  hoped,  by  a  compromise. 
njhey  refused  to  dethrone  the  king,  but  they  had  sworn  no 
/unity  to  his  child,  and  at  Henry's  death  they  agreed  to  re- 
teive  the  Duke  as  successor  to  the  crown.  But  the  open 
display  of  York's  pretensions  at  once  united  the  partizans  of 
the  royal  House,  and  the  deadly  struggle  which  received  the 
name  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  from  the  white  rose  which 
formed  the  badge  of  the  House  of  York  and  the  red  rose 
which  was  the  ccgnizance  of  the  House  of  Lancaster,  began 
in  the  gathering  of  the  north  round  Lord  Clifford,  and  of 
the  west  round  the  new  Duke  of  Somerset.  York,  who  had 
hurried  to  meet  the  first  with  a  far  inferior  force,  was  de- 
feated and  slain  at  Wakefield,  and  the  passion  of  civil  war 
broke  fiercely  out  on  the  field.  The  Earl  of  Salisbury  was 
hurried  to  the  block,  and  the  head  of  Duke  Richard,  crowned 
in  mockery  with  a  diadem  of  paper,  is  said  to  have  been  im- 
paled on  the  walls  of  York.  His  second  son,  Lord  Rutland, 
fell  crying  for  mercy  on  his  knees  before  Clifford.  But 
Clifford's  father  had  been  the  first  to  fall  in  the  battle  of  St. 
Albans  which  opened  the  struggle.  "As  your  father  killed 
mine,"  cried  the  savage  baron  while  he  plunged  his  dagger 
in  the  young  noble's  breast,  "  I  will  kill  you  1"  The  brutal 
deed  was  soon  to  be  avenged.  Duke  Richard's  eldest  son, 
Edward,  Earl  of  March,  hurried  from  the  west,  and,  routing 
a  body  of  Lancastrians  at  Mortimers  Cross,  struck  boldly 
upon  London.  A  force  of  Kentishmen  under  the  Earl  of 
Warwick  burred  the  march  of  the  Lancastrian  army  on  the 
capital,  but  after  a  desperate  struggle  at  St.  Albans  the 
Yorkist  forces  broke  under  cover  of  night.  An  immediate 
advance  of  the  conquerors  might  have  decided  the  contest, 
but  Queen  Margaret  paused  to  sully  her  victory  by  a  series  of 
bloody  executions,  and  the  rough  northerners  who  formed 
the  bulk  of  her  army  scattered  to  pillage,  while  Edward  ap- 
peared before  London.  The  citizens  rallied  at  his  call,  and 
cries  of  "  Long  live  King  Edward  "  rang  round  the  handsome 
-young  leader  as  he  rode  through  the  streets.  A  council  of 
Yorkist  lords,  hastily  summoned,  resolved  that  the  com- 


362  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

promise  agreed  on  in  Parliament  was  at  an  end  and  that 
Henry  of  Lancaster  had  forfeited  the  throne.  The  final 
issue,  however,  now  lay,  not  with  Parliament,  but  with  the 
sword.  Disappointed  of  London,  the  Lancastrian  army  fell 
rapidly  back  on  the  north,  and  Edward  hurried  as  rapidly  in 
pursuit. 

The  two  armies  encountered  one  another  at  Towton  Field, 
near  Tadcaster.  In  the  numbers  engaged,  as  well  as  in  the 
terrible  obstinacy  of  the  struggle,  no  such  battle 
^a(^  l)een  seen  i11  England  since  the  fight  of 
Senlac.  The  armies  numbered  together  nearly 
120.000  men.  The  day  had  just  broken  when  the  Yorkists 
advanced  through  a  thick  snow-fall,  and  for  six  hours  the 
battle  raged  with  desperate  bravery  on  either  side.  At  one 
critical  moment  Warwick  saw  his  men  falter,  and  stabbing  his 
horse  before  them,  swore  on  the  cross  of  his  sword  to  win  or 
die  on  the  field.  The  battle  was  turned  by  the  arrival  of 
Norfolk  with  a  fresh  force.  At  last  the  Lancastrians  gave 
way,  a  river  in  their  rear  turned  the  retreat  into  a  rout,  and 
the  flight  and  carnage,  for  no  quarter  was  given  on  either 
side,  went  on  through  the  night  and  the  morrow.  Edward's 
herald  counted  more  than  20,000  Lancastrian  corpses  on  the 
field,  and  the  losses  of  the  conquerors  were  hardly  less  heavy. 
But  their  triumph  was  complete.  The  Earl  of  Northumber- 
land was  slain  ;  the  Earls  of  Devonshire  and  Wiltshire  were 
taken  and  beheaded  ;  the  Duke  of  Somerset  fled  into  exile. 
Henry  himself  with  his  queen  was  forced  to  fly  over  the 
border  and  to  find  a  refuge  in  Scotland.  The  cause  of  the 
House  of  Lancaster  was  lost :  and  with  the  victory  of  Towton 
the  crown  of  England  passed  to  Edward  of  York.  A  vast 
bill  of  attainder  wrapped  in  the  same  ruin  and  confiscation 
the  nobles  and  gentry  who  still  adhered  to  the  House  of 
Lancaster.  The  struggles  of  Margaret  only  served  to  bring , 
fresh  calamities  on  her  adherents.  Anew  rising  in  the  North 
was  crushed  by  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  and  a  legend  which 
lights  up  the  gloom  of  the  time  with  a  gleam  of  poetry  told 
how  the  fugitive  queen,  after  escaping  with  difficulty  from 
a  troop  of  bandits,  found  a  new  brigand  in  the  depths  of  the 
wood.  With  the  daring  of  despair  she  confided  to  him  her 
child.  "  I  trust  to  your  loyalty/'  she  said,  "  the  sou  of 
your  king."  Margaret  and  her  child  escaped  over  the 


THE    WARS   OF   THE   ROSES.      1450   TO    1471.  363 

border  under  the  robber's  guidance;  but  on  the  defeat  of  a 
new  revolt  in  the  battle  of  Hexlwin,  Henry,  after  helpless 
wanderings,  was  betrayed  into  the  hands  of  his  enemies. 
His  feet  were  tied  to  the  stirrups,  he  was  led  thrice  round 
the  pillory,  and  then  conducted  as  a  prisoner  to  the  Tower. 

Ruined  as  feudalism  really  was  by  the  decline  of  the  baro- 
nage, the  extinction  of  the  greater  houses,  and  the  break-up 
of  the  great  estates,  which  had  been  steadily 
going  on,  it  had  never  seemed  more  powerful  than 
in  the  years  which  followed  Towton.  Out  of  the 
wreck  of  the  baronage  a  family  which  had  always  stood  high 
amongst  its  fellows  towered  into  unrivaled  greatness.  Lord 
Warwick  was  by  descent  Earl  of  Salisbury,  a  son  of  the 
great  noble  whose  support  had  been  mainly  instrumental  in 
raising  the  House  of  York  to  the  throne.  He  had  doubled 
bis  wealth  and  influence  by  his  acquisition  of  the  Earldom  of 
Warwick  through  a  marriage  with  the  heiress  of  the  Bean- 
champs.  His  services  to  the  Yorkists  were  munificently  re- 
warded by  the  grant  of  vast  estates  from  the  confiscated 
lands  of  Lancastrians,  and  by  his  elevation  to  the  highest 
poats  in  the  service  of  the  State.  He  was  captain  of  Calais, 
admiral  of  the  fleet  in  the  Channel,  and  Warden  of  the 
Western  Marches.  This  personal  power  was  backed  by  the 
power  of  the  House  of  Neville,  of  which  he  was  the  head. 
The  command  of  the  northern  border  lay  in  the  hands  of  his 
brother,  Lord  Montagu,  who  received  as  his  share  of  the  spoil 
the  forfeited  Earldom  of  Northumberland  and  the  estates  of 
his  hereditary  rivals  the  Percies.  A  younger  brother,  George 
Neville,  was  raised  to  the  See  of  York  and  the  post  of  Lord 
Chancellor.  Lesser  rewards  fell  to  his  uncles,  Lords  Fal- 
conberg,  Abergavenny,  and  Latimer.  The  vast  power 
which  such  an  accumulation  of  wealth  and  honors  placed  at 
the  Earl's  disposal  was  wielded  with  consummate  ability. 
In  outer  seeming  Warwick  wus  the  very  type  of  the  feudal 
baron.  He  could  raise  armies  at  his  call  from  his  own  earl- 
doms. Six  hundred  liveried  retainers  followed  him  to 
Parliament.  Thousands  of  dependants  feasted  in  his  court- 
yard. But  few  men  were  really  further  from  the  feudal 
ideal.  Active  and  ruthless  warrior  as  he  was,  his  enemies 
denied  to  the  Earl  the  gift  of  personal  daring.  In  war  he 
was  rather  general  than  soldier.  His  genius  in  fact  was  not 


364  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

so  'much  military  as  diplomatic;  what  he  excelled  in  was 
intrigue,  treachery,  the  contrivance  of  plots,  and  sudden 
desertions.  And  in  the  boy-king  whom  he  had  raised  to  the 
throne  he  met  not  merely  a  consummate  general,  but  a 
politician  whose  subtlety  and  rapidity  of  conception  was 
destined  to  leave  a  deep  and  enduring  mark  on  the  character 
of  the  monarchy  itself.  Edward  was  but  nineteen  at  his  ac- 
cession, and  both  his  kinship  (for  he  was  the  king's  cousin 
by  blood)  and  his  recent  services  rendered  Warwick  during 
the  first  three  years  of  his  reign  all-powerful  in  the  State. 
But  the  final  ruin  of  Henry's  cause  in  the  battle  of  Hexham 
gave  the  signal  for  a  silent  struggle  between  the  Earl  and 
his  young  Sovereign.  Edward's  first  step  was  to  avow  his 
union  with  the  widow  of  a  slain  Lancastrian,  Dame  Elizabeth 
Grey,  at  the  very  moment  when  Warwick  was  negotiating 
for  him  a  French  marriage.  Her  family,  the  Woodvilles, 
were  raised  to  greatness  as  a  counterpoise  to  the  Nevilles ; 
her  father,  Lord  Rivers,  became  treasurer  and  constable  ; 
her  son  by  the  first  marriage  was  betrothed  to  the  heiress  of 
the  Duke  of  Exeter,  whom  Warwick  sought  for  his  nephew. 
Warwick's  policy  lay  in  a  close  connection  with  France  ; 
foiled  in  his  first  project,  he  now  pressed  for  a  marriage  of 
the  king's  sister,  Margaret,  with  a  French  prince,  but  in 
1467,  while  he  crossed  the  sea  to  treat  with  Lewis,  Edward 
availed  himself  of  his  absence  to  deprive  his  brother  of  the 
seals,  and  prepared  to  wed  Margaret  to  the-  sworn  enemy 
both  of  France  and  of  Warwick,  Charles  the  Bold,  Duke  of 
Burgundy.  Warwick  replied  to  Edward's  challenge  by  a 
plot  to  rally  the  discontented  Yorkists  round  the  king's 
brother,  the  Duke  of  Clarence.  Secret  negotiations  ended 
in  the  marriage  of  his  daughter  to  Clarence  ;  and  a  revolt 
which  instantly  broke  out  threw  Edward  into  the  hands  of 
his  great  subject.  But  the  bold  scheme  broke  down.  The 
Yorkist  nobles  demanded  the  king's  liberation.  Warwick 
could  look  for  support  only  to  the  Lancastrians,  but  the 
Lancastrians  demanded  Henry's  restoration  as  the  price  of 
their  aid.  Such  a  demand  was  fatal  to  the  plan  for  placing 
Clarence  on  the  throne,  and  Warwick  was  thrown  back  on  a 
formal  reconciliation  with  the  king.  A  new  rising  broke 
out  in  the  following  spring  in  Lincolnshire.  The  king, 
however,  was  now  ready  for  the  strife.  A  rapid  march  to  the 


THE   WARS   OF  THE   ROSES.      1450   TO   1471.  365 

north  ended  in  theront  of  the  insurgents,  and  Edward  turned 
on  the  instigators  of  the  revolt.  But  Clarence  and  the  Earl 
could  gather  no  force  to  meet  him.  Yorkist  and  Lancastrian 
alike  held  aloof,  and  they  were  driven  to  flight.  Calais, 
though  held  by  Warwick's  deputy,  repulsed  them  from  its 
walls,  and  the  Earl's  fleet  was  forced  to  take  refuge  in 
1'rance,  where  the  Burgundian  connection  of  Ed  ward  seen  red 
his  enemies  the  support  of  Lewis  the  Eleventh.  But  the 
unscrupulous  temper  of  the.  Earl  was  seen  in  the  alliance 
which  he  at  once  concluded  with  the  partizans  of  the 
House  of  Lancaster.  On  the  promise  of  Queen  Margaret  to 
wed  her  son  to  his  daughter  Anne,  Warwick  engaged  to  re- 
store the  crown  to  the  royal  captive  whom  he  had  flung  into 
the  Tower  ;  and  choosing  a  moment  when  Edward  was  busy 
with  a  revolt  in  the  North,  and  when  a  storm  had  dispersed 
the  Burgundian  fleet  which  defended  the  Channel,  he  threw 
himself  boldly  on  the  English  shore.  His  army  grew  as  he 
pushed  northward,  and  the  desertion  of  Lord  Montagu,  whom 
Edward  still  trusted,  drove  the  king  in  turn  to  seek  shelter 
oversea.  While  Edward  fled  with  a  handful  of  adherents  to 
beg  help  from  Charles  the  Bold,  Henry  of  Lancaster  was 
again  conducted  from  his  prison  to  the  throne,  but  the  bitter 
hate  of  the  party  Warwick  had  so  ruthlessly  crushed  found 
no  gratitude  for  the  "  King  Maker."  His  own  conduct,  as 
well  as  that  of  his  party,  when  Edward  again  disembarked  in 
the  spring  at  llavenspur,  showed  a  weariness  of  the  new 
alliance,  quickened  perhaps  by  their  dread  of  Margaret, 
whose  return  to  England  was  hourly  expected.  Passing 
through  the  Lancastrian  districts  of  the  North  with  a  decla- 
ration that  he  waived  all  right  to  the  crown  and  sought  only 
his  own  hereditary  dukedom,  Edward  was  left  unassailed  by 
a  force  which  Montagu  had  collected,  and  was  joined  on  his 
march  by  his  brother  Clarence,  who  had  throughout  acted  in 
concert  with  Warwick.  Encamped  at  Coventry,  the  Earl 
himself  contemplated  a  similar  treason,  but  the  coming  of 
two  Lancastrian  leaders  put  an  end  to  the  negotiations. 
When  Montagu  joined  his  brother,  Edward  inarched  on 
London,  followed  by  Warwick's  army  ;  its  gates  were  opened 
by  the  perfidy  of  the  Earl's  brother,  Archbishop  Neville  ; 
and  Henry  of  Lancaster  passed  anew  to  the  Tower.  The 
battle  of  Barnet,  a  medley  of  carnage  and  treachery  which 


366  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

lasted  three  hours,  ended  with  the  fall  of  Warwick,  who  was 
charged  with  cowardly  flight.  Margaret  had  landed  too  late 
to  bring  aid  to  her  great  partizan,  but  the  military  triumph 
of  Edward  was  completed  by  the  skilful  strategy  with  which 
he  forced  her  army  to  battle  at  Tewkesbury,  and  by  its  com- 
plete overthrow.  The  Queen  herself  became  a  captive  ;  her 
boy  fell  on  the  field,  stabbed — as  was  affirmed — by  the  Yorkist 
lords  after  Edward  had  met  his  cry  for  mercy  by  a  buffet 
from  his  gauntlet ;  and  the  death  of  Henry  in  the  Tower 
crushed  the  last  hopes  of  the  House  of  Lancaster. 


Section  III.— The  New  Monarchy.     1471—1509. 

[Authorities.—  Edward  V.  is  the  subject  of  a  work  attributed  to  Sir  Thomas 
More,  and  which  almost  certainly  derives  much  of  its  information  from  Arch- 
bishop Morton.  Whatever  its  historical  worth  may  be,  it  is  remarkable  in  its  En- 
glish form  as  the  first  historical  work  of  any  literary  value  which  we  possess 
written  in  our  modern  prose.  The  "  Letters  and  papers  of  Richard  III.  and  Henry 
VII.,"  some  "  Memorials  of  Henry  VII.."  including  his  life  by  Bernard  Andr£  of 
Toulouse,  and  a  volume  of  "  Materials  "  for  a  history  of  his  reign  have  been 
edited  for  the  Rolls  Series.  A  biography  of  Henry  is  among  the  works  of  Lord 
Bacon.  Halle's  Chronicle  extends  from  Henry  IV.  to  Henry  VIII.  Miss  Hal- 
stead,  in  her  "  Life  of  Richard  III.,'"  has  elaborately  illustrated  a  reign  of  some 
constitutional  importance.  For  Caxton,  see  the  biography  by  Mr.  Blades.] 

There  are  few  periods  in  our  annals  from  which  we  turn 
with  such  weariness  and  disgust  as  from  the  Wars  of  the 

Roses.  Their  savage  battles,  their  ruthless  execu- 
MonardT  ^ions,  their  shameless  treasons,  seem  all  the  more 

terrible  from  the  pure  selfishness  of  the  ends  for 
which  men  fought,  the  utter  want  of  all  nobleness  and  chiv- 
alry in  the  struggle  itself,  of  all  great  results  in  its  close.  But 
even  while  the  contest  was  raging  the  cool  eye  of  a  philo- 
sophic statesman  could  find  in  it  matter  for  other  feelings 
than  those  of  mere  disgust.  England,  presented  to  Philippe 
de  Comminesthe  rare  spectacle  of  land,  where,  brutal  as  was 
the  civil  strife,  "there  are  no  buildings  destroyed  or  demol- 
ished by  war,  and  where  the  mischief  of  it  falls  on  those  who 
make  the  war."  The  ruin  and  bloodshed  were  limited,  in 
f  c1-,  to  the  great  lords  and  their  feudal  retainers.  Once  or 
twice  indeed,  as  at  Towton,  the  towns  threw  themselves  into 
the  struggle,  but  for  the  most  part  the  trading  and  agricultural 
classes  stood  wholly  apart  from  it.  Slowly  but  surely  the  for- 
eign commerce  of  the  country,  hitherto  conducted  by  the 


THE   NEW   MONARCHY.      1471   TO   1509.  867 

Italian,  the  Hanse  merchant,  or  the  trader  of  Catalonia  or 
southern  Ganl,  was  passing  into  English  hands.  English 
merchants  were  settled  at  Florence  and  at  Venice.  English 
merchant  ships  appeared  in  the  Baltic.  The  first  faint  up- 
growth of  manufactures  was  seen  in  a  crowd  of  protective 
statutes  which  formed  a  marked  feature  in  the  legislation  of 
Edward  the  Fourth.  The  general  tranquillity  of  the  country 
at  large,  while  the  baronage  was  dashing  itself  to  pieces  in 
battle  after  battle,  was  shown  by  the  remarkable  fact  that 
justice  remained  wholly  undisturbed.  The  law  courts  sat  at 
Westminster.  The  judges  rode  on  circuit  as  of  old.  The 
system  of  jury-trial  took  more  and  more  its  modern  form  by 
the  separation  of  the  jurors  from  the  witnesses.  But  if  the 
common  view  of  England  during  these  Wars  as  a  mere  chaos 
of  treason  and  bloodshed  is  a  false  one,  still  more  false  is  the 
common  view  of  the  pettiness  of  their  result.  The  Wars  of 
the  Roses  did  far  more  than  ruin  one  royal  house  or  set  up 
another  on  the  throne.  If  they  did  not  utterly  destroy  En- 
glish freedom,  they  arrested  its  progress  for  more  than  a  hun- 
dred years.  They  found  England,  in  the  words  of  Commines, 
"among  all  the  world's  lordships  of  which  I  have  knowledge, 
that  where  the  public  weal  is  best  ordered,  and  where  least 
violence  reigns  over  the  people."  A  King  of  England — the 
shrewd  observer  noticed — "  can  undertake  no  enterprise  of 
account  without  assembling  his  Parliament,  which  is  a  thing 
most  wise  and  holy,  and  therefore  are  these  kings  stronger 
and  better  served"  than  the  despotic  sovereigns  of  the  Conti- 
nent. The  English  kingship,  as  a  judge,  Sir  John  Fortescue, 
could  boast  when  writing  at  this  time,  was  not  an  absolute 
but  a  limited  monarchy  ;  the  land  was  not  a  land  where  the 
will  of  the  prince  was  itself  the  law,  but  where  the  prince 
could  neither  make  laws  nor  impose  taxes  save  by  his  subjects' 
consent.  At  no  time  had  Parliament  played  so  constant  and 
prominent  a  part  in  the  government  of  the  realm.  At  no  time 
had  the  principles  of  constitutional  liberty  seemed  so  thor- 
oughly understood  and  so  dear  to  the  people  at  large.  The 
long  Parlimentary  contest  between  the  Crown  and  the  two 
Houses  since  the  days  of  Edward  the  first  had  firmly  estab- 
lished the  great  securities  of  national  liberty — the  right  of 
freedom  from  arbitary  taxation,  from  arbitrary  legislation, 
from  arbitrary  imprisonment,  and  the  responsibility  of  even 


868  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

'the  highest  servants  of  the  Crown  to  Parliament  and  to  the 
law.  But  with  the  close  of  the  struggle  for  the  succession 
this  liberty  suddenly  disappears.  We  enter  on  an  epoch  of 
constitutional  retrogression  in  which  the  slow  work  of  the 
age  that  went  before  it  was  rapidly  undone.  Parliamentary 
life  was  almost  suspended,  or  was  turned  into  a  mere  form  by 
the  overpowering  influence  of  the  Crown.  The  legislative 
powers  of  the  two  Houses  were  usurped  by  the  Royal  Council. 
Arbitrary  taxation  reappeared  in  benevolences  and  forced 
loans.  Personal  liberty  was  almost  extinguished  by  a  formid- 
able spy-system  and  by  the  constant  practise  of  arbitrary  im- 
prisonment. Justice  was  degraded  by  the  prodigal  use  of  bills 
of  attainder,  by  the  wide  extension  of  the  judicial  power  of  the 
Royal  Council,  by  the  servility  of  judges,  by  the  coercion  of 
juries.  So  vast  and  sweeping  was  the  change  that  to  careless 
observers  of  a  later  day  the  constitutional  monarchy  of  the  Ed- 
wards and  the  Henries  seemed  suddenly  to  have  transformed 
itself  under  the  Tudors  into  a  despotism  as  complete  as  the  des- 
potism of  the  Turk.  Such  a  view  is  no  doubt  exaggerated  and 
unjust.  Bend  and  strain  the  law  as  he  might,  there  never  was  a 
time  when  the  most  wilful  of  English  rulers  failed  to  own  the 
restraints  of  law  ;  and  the  obedience  of  the  most  servile 
among  English  subjects  lay  within  bounds,  at  once  political 
and  religious,  which  no  theory  of  king-worship  could  bring 
them  to  overpass.  But  even  if  we  make  these  reserves,  the 
character  of  the  Monarchy  from  the  time  of  Edward  the  Fourth 
to  the  time  of  Elizabeth  remains  something  strange  and  is- 
olated in  our  history.  It  is  hard  to  connect  the  kingship  of 
the  old  English,  of  the  Norman,  the  Angevin,  or  the  Planta- 
genet  kings,  with  the  kingship  of  the  house  of  York  or  of 
the  House  of  Tudor. 

If  we  seek  a  reason  for  so  sudden  and  complete  a  revolution, 

we  find  it  in  the  disappearance  of  that  organization  of  society 

The  Causes  'n  which  our  constitutional  liberty  had  till  now 

of  the  new  found  its  security.     Freedom  had  been  won  by  th< 

Monarchy.    sword  of  the  Baronage.     Its  tradition  had  been 

watched  over  by  the  jealousy  of  the  Church.     The  new  class 

of  the  Commons  which  had  grown  from  the  union  of  the 

country  squire  and  the  town  trader  was  widening  its  sphere 

of  political  activity  as  it  grew.     But  at  the  close  of  the  Wars 

of  the  Roses  these  older  checks  no  longer  served  as  restraints 


THE  NEW   MONARCHY.      1471   TO   1509.  869 

npon  the  action  of  the  Crown.  The  Baronage  had  fallen 
more  and  more  into  decay.  The  Church  lingered  helpless 
and  perplexed,  till  it  was  struck  down  by  Thomas  Cromwell. 
The  traders  and  the  smaller  proprietors  sank  into  political 
inactivity.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Crown,  which  only  fifty 
years  before  had  been  the  sport  of  every  faction,  towered  into 
solitary  greatness.  The  old  English  kingship,  limited  by  the 
forces  of  feudalism  or  of  the  religious  sanctions  wielded  by 
the  priesthood,  or  by  the  progress  of  constitutional  freedom, 
faded  suddenly  away,  and  in  its  place  we  see,  all-absorbing 
and  unrestrained,  the  despotism  of  the  new  Monarchy. 
Revolutionary  as  the  change  was,  however,  we  have  already 
seen  in  their  gradual  growth  the*  causes  which  brought  it 
about.  The  social  organization  from  which  onr  political 
constitution  had  hitherto  sprung  and  on  which  it  still  rested 
had  been  silently  sapped  by  the  progress  of  industry,  by  the 
growth  of  spiritual  and  intellectual  enlightenment,  and  by 
changes  in  the  art  of  war.  Its  ruin  was  precipitated  by  the 
new  attitude  of  men  towards  the  Church,  by  the  disfranchise- 
mont  of  the  Commons,  and  by  the  decline  of  the  Baronage. 
Of  the  great  houses  some  were  extinct,  others  lingered  only 
in  obscure  branches  which  were  mere  shadows  of  their  former 
greatness.  Wita  the  exception  of  the  Poles,  the  Stanleys, 
and  the  Howards,  themselves  families  of  recent  origin,  hardly 
a  fragment  of  the  older  baronage  interfered  from  this  timo 
in  the  work  of  government.  Neither  the  Church  nor  the 
smaller  proprietors  of  the  country,  who  with  the  merchant 
classes  formed  the  Commons,  were  ready  to  take  the  place 
of  the  ruined  nobles.  Imposing  as  the  great  ecclesiastical 
body  still  seemed  from  the  memories  of  its  past,  its  immense 
wealth,  its  tradition  of  statesmanship,  it  was  rendered  power- 
less by  a  want  of  spiritual  enthusiasm,  by  a  moral  inertness, 
by  its  antagonism  to  the  deeper  religious  convictions  of  the 
people,  and  its  blind  hostility  to  the  intellectual  movement 
which  was  beginning  to  stir  the  world.  Somewhat  of  their 
old  independence  lingered  indeed  among  the  lower  clergy 
and  the  monastic  orders,  but  it  was  through  its  prelates  that 
the  Church  exercised  a  directly  political  influence,  and  these 
showed  a  different  temper  from  the  clergy.  Driven  by  sheer 
need,  by  the  attack  of  the  barons  on  their  temporal  posses- 
sions, and  of  the  Lollards  on  their  spiritual  authority,  into 
34 


370  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

dependence  on  the  Crown,  they  threw  their  weight  on  the 
side  of  the  king  with  the  simple  view  of  averting  by  means 
of  the  Monarchy  the  pillage  of  the  Church.  But  in  any 
wider  political  sense  the  influence  of  the  body  to  which  they 
belonged  was  insignificant.  It  is  less  obvious  at  first  sight 
why  the  Commons  should  share  the  political  ruin  of  the 
Church  and  the  Lords,  for  the  smaller  county  proprietors 
were  growing  fast,  both  in  wealth  and  numbers,  while  the 
burgess  class,  as  we  have  seen,  was  deriving  fresh  riches  from 
the  development  of  trade.  But  the  result  of  the  narrowing 
of  the  franchise  and  of  the  tampering  with  elections  was 
now  felt  in  the  political  insignificance  of  the  Lower  House. 
Keduced  by  these  measures  to  a  virtual  dependence  on  the 
baronage,  it  fell  with  the  fall  of  the  class  to  which  it  looked 
for  guidance  and  support.  And  while  its  rival  forces  disap- 
peared, the  Monarchy  stood  ready  to  take  their  place.  Not 
only  indeed  were  the  churchman,  the  squire,  and  the  burgess 
powerless  to  vindicate  liberty  against  the  Crown,  but  the  very 
interests  of  self-preservation  led  them  at  this  moment  to  lay 
freedom  at  its  feet.  The  Church  still  trembled  at  the  progress 
of  heresy.  The  close  corporations  of  the  towns  needed  pro- 
tection for  their  privileges.  The  landower  shared  with  the 
trader  a  profound  horror  of  the  war  and  disorder  which  they 
had  witnessed,  and  an  almost  reckless  desire  to  entrust  the 
Crown  with  any  power  which  would  prevent  its  return.  But 
above  all,  the  landed  and  monied  classes  clung  passionately  to 
the  Monarchy,  as  the  one  great  force  left  which  could  save 
them  from  social  revolt.  The  rising  of  the  Commons  of  Kent 
shows  that  the  troubles  against  which  the  Statutes  of  Labor- 
ers had  been  directed  still  remained  as  a  formidable  source 
of  discontent.  The  great  change  in  the  character  of  agricul- 
ture indeed,  which  we  have  before  described,  the  throwing 
together  of  the  smaller  holdings,  the  diminution  of  tillage, 
the  increase  of  pasture  lands,  had  tended  largely  to  swell  the 
numbers  and  turbulence  of  the  floating  labor  class.  The 
riots  against  "  enclosures,''  of  which  we  first  hear  in  the  time 
of  Henry  the  Sixth,  and  which  became  a  constant  feature  of 
the  Tudor  period,  are  indications  not  only  of  a  constant  strife 
going  on  in  every  quarter  between  the  landowner  and  the 
smaller  peasant  class,  but  of  a  mass  of  social  discontent  which 
was  constantly  seeking  an  outlet  in  violence  and  revolution. 


THE  NEW   MONARCHY.      1471   TO    1509.  371 

And  at  this  moment  the  break-up  of  the  military  households 
of  the  nobles,  and  the  return  of  wounded  and  disabled  soldiers 
from  the  wars,  added  a  new  element  of  violence  and  disorder 
to  the  seething  mass.  It  was  in  truth  this  social  danger 
which  lay  at  the  root  of  the  Tudor  despotism.  For  the  pro- 
prietary classes  the  repression  of  the  poor  was  a  question  of 
life  and  death.  Employer  and  proprietor  were  ready  to  sur- 
render freedom  into  the  hands  of  the  one  power  which  could 
preserve  them  from  social  anarchy.  It  was  to  the  selfish 
panic  of  the  landowners  that  England  owed  the  Statute  of 
Laborers  and  its  terrible  heritage  of  pauperism.  It  was  to 
the  selfish  panic  of  both  landowner  and  merchant  that  she 
owed  the  despotism  of  the  Monarchy. 

The  founder  of  the  New  Monarchy  was  Edward  the  Fourth. 
As  a  mere  boy  he  showed  himself  among  the  ablest  and  the 
most  pitiless  of  the  warriors  of  the  civil  war.  In 
the  first  flush  of  manhood  he  looked  on  with  a  cool  the^u'th 
ruthlessness  while  gray-haired  nobles  were  hurried 
to  the  block.  In  his  later  race  for  power  he  had  shown  him- 
self more  subtle  in  his  treachery  than  even  Warwick  himself. 
His  triumph  was  no  sooner  won  however  than  the  young  king 
seemed  to  abandon  himself  to  a  voluptuous  indolence,  to  revels 
with  the  city-wives  of  London  and  the  caresses  of  mistresses 
like  Jane  Shore.  Tall  in  stature  and  of  singular  beauty,  his 
winning  manners  and  gay  carelessness  of  bearing  secured  him 
a  popularity  which  had  been  denied  to  nobler  kings.  But 
his  indolence  and  gaiety  were  mere  veils  beneath  which  Ed- 
ward shrouded  a  profound  political  ability.  No  one  could 
contrast  more  utterly  in  outward  appearance  with  the  subtle 
sovereigns  of  his  time,  with  Louis  the  Eleventh  or  Ferdinand 
of  Aragon,  but  his  work  was  the  same  as  theirs,  and  it  was 
done  as  completely.  While  jesting  with  aldermen,  or  dally- 
ing with  his  mistresses,  or  idling  over  the  new  pages  from  the 
printing  press  at  Westminster,  Edward  was  silently  laying  the 
foundations  of  an  absolute  rule.  The  almost  total  discon- 
tinuance of  Parliamentary  life  was  in  itself  a  revolution.  Up 
to  this  moment  the  two  Houses  had  played  a  part  which  be- 
came more  and  more  prominent  in  the  government  of  the 
realm.  Under  the  two  first  kings  of  the  House  of  Lancaster 
Parliament  had  been  summoned  almost  every  year.  Not  only 
had  the  right  of  self-taxation  and  initiation  of  laws  been 


372  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

yielded  explicitly  to  the  Commons,  but  they  had  interfered 
with  the  administration  of  the  State,  had  directed  the  appli- 
cation of  subsidies,  and  called  royal  ministers  to  account  by 
repeated  instances  of  impeachment.  Under  Henry  the 
Sixth  an  important  step  in  constitutional  progress  had  been 
made  by  abandoning  the  old  form  of  presenting  the  requests 
of  the  Parliament  in  the  form  of  petitions  which  were  subse- 
quently molded  into  statutes  by  the  Royal  Council  ;  the 
statute  itself,  in  its  final  form,  was  now  presented  for  the 
royal  assent,  and  the  Crown  was  deprived  of  its  former  privi- 
lege of  modifying  it.  But  with  the  reign  of  Edward  the 
Fourth  not  only  does  this  progress  cease,  but  the  very  action 
of  Parliament  itself  comes  almost  to  an  end.  For  the  first 
time  since  the  days  of  John  not  a  single  law  which  promoted 
freedom  or  remedied  the  abuses  of  power  was  even  proposed. 
The  necessity  for  summoning  the  two  Houses  had,  in  fact, 
been  removed  by  the  enormous  tide  of  wealth  which  the  con- 
fiscations of  the  civil  war  poured  into  the  royal  treasury.  In 
the  single  bill  of  attainder  which  followed  the  victory  of 
Towton,  twelve  great  nobles  and  more  than  a  hundred  knights 
and  squires  were  stripped  of  their  estates  to  the  king's  profit. 
It  was  said  that  nearly  a  fifth  of  the  land  had  passed  into  the 
royal  possession  at  one  period  or  another  of  the  civil  war.  A 
grant  of  the  customs  was  given  to  the  king  for  life.  Edward 
added  to  his  resources  by  trading  on  a  vast  scale.  The  royal 
ships,  freighted  with  tin, wool,  and  cloth,  made  the  name  of  the 
merchant-king  famous  in  the  ports  of  Italy  and  Greece.  The 
enterprises  he  planned  against  France,  though  frustrated  by 
the  refusal  of  Charles  of  Burgundy  to  cooperate  with  him  in 
them,  afforded  a  fresh  financial  resource;  and  the  subsidies 
granted  for  a  war  which  never  took  place  swelled  the  royal 
exchequer.  But  the  pretext  for  war  enabled  Edward 
not  only  to  increase  his  hoard,  but  to  deal  a  deadly  blow  at 
the  liberty  which  the  Commons  had  won.  Setting  aside  the 
usage  of  contracting  loans  by  the  authority  of  Parliament, 
Edward  called  before  him  the  merchants  of  London  and  re- 
quested from  each  a  gift  or  "  benevolence,"  in  proportion  to  the 
royal  needs.  The  exaction  was  bitterly  resented  even  by  the 
classes  with  v/hom  the  king  had  been  most  popular,  but  for  the 
moment  resistance  was  fruitless,  and  the  system  of  "ben- 
evolence "  was  soon  to  be  developed  into  the  forced  loans  of 


THE   NEW   MONARCHY.      1471   TO   1509.  373 

"Wolsey  and  of  Charles  the  First.  It  was  to  Edward  that  his 
Tudor  successors  owed  the  introduction  of  an  elaborate  spy 
system,  the  use  of  the  rack,  and  the  practise  of  interference 
with  the  purity  of  justice.  In  the  history  of  intellectual  prog- 
ress alone  his  reign  takes  a  brighter  color,  and  the  founder 
of  a  new  despotism  presents  a  claim  to  our  regard  as  the 
patron  of  Caxton. 

Literature  indeed  seemed  at  this  moment  to  have  died  as 
utterly  as  freedom  itself.  The  genius  of  Chaucer,  and  of 
the  one  or  more  poets  whose  works  have  been  L 
confounded  with  Chaucer's,  defied  for  a  while  the  eftir 
pedantry,  the  affectation,  the  barrenness  of  their  Charon 
age  ;  but  the  sudden  close  of  this  poetic  outburst  left  Eng- 
land to  a  crowd  of  poetasters,  compilers,  scribblers  of  inter- 
minable moralities,  rhymers  of  chronicles,  and  translators  from 
the  worn-out  field  of  French  romance.  Some  faint  trace  of 
the  liveliness  and  beauty  of  older  models  lingers  among  the 
heavy  platitudes  of  Gower,  but  even  this  vanished  from  the 
didactic  puerilities,  the  prosaic  commonplaces,  of  Occleve 
and  Lydgate.  The  literature  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  dying 
out  with  the  Middle  Ages  themselves  ;  in  letters  as  in  life 
their  thirst  for  knowledge  had  spent  itself  in  the  barren 
mazes  of  the  scholastic  philosophy,  their  ideal  of  warlike 
nobleness  faded  away  before  the  gaudy  travesty  of  a  spurious 
chivalry,  and  the  mystic  enthusiasm  of  their  devotion  shrank 
at  the  touch  of  persecution  into  a  narrow  orthodoxy  and  a 
flat  morality.  The  clergy,  who  had  concentrated  in  them- 
selves the  intellectual  effort  of  the  older  time,  were  ceasing 
to  be  an  intellectual  class  at  all.  The  monasteries  were  no 
longer  seats  of  learning.  "  I  found  in  them,"  said  Poggio, 
an  Italian  traveler  twenty  years  after  Chaucer's  death, 
"  men  given  up  to  sensuality  in  abundance,  but  very  few 
lovers  of  learning,  and  those  of  a  barbarous  gort,  skilled  more 
in  quibbles  and  sophisms  than  in  literature."  The  erec- 
tion of  colleges,  which  was  beginning,  failed  to  arrest  the 
'{nick  decline  of  the  universities  both  in  the  numbers  and 
learning  of  their  students.  Those  at  Oxford  amounted  to  only 
a  fifth  of  the  scholars  who  had  attended  its  lectures  a  century 
before,  and  "  Oxford  Latin"  became  proverbial  for  a  jargon 
in  which  the  very  tradition  of  grammar  had  been  lost.  All 
literary  production  was  nearly  at  an  end.  Historical  com- 


874  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

position  lingered  on  indeed  in  compilations  of  extracts  from 
past  writers,  such  as  make  up  the  so-called  works  of  Walsing- 
ham,  in  jejune  monastic  annals,  or  worthless  popular  corn- 
peudiums.  But  the  only  real  trace  of  mental  activity  is  to 
be  found  in  the  numerous  treatises  on  alchemy  and  magic, 
on  the  elixir  of  life  or  the  philosopher's  stone,  a  fungous 
growth  which  most  unequivocally  witnesses  to  the  progress 
of  intellectual  decay.  On  the  other  hand,  while  the  older 
literary  class  Avas  dying  out,  a  glance  beneath  the  surface 
shows  us  the  stir  of  a  new  interest  in  knowledge  among  the 
masses  of  the  people  itself.  The  correspondence  of  the  Pas- 
ton  family,  which  has  been  happily  preserved,  not  only  dis- 
plays a  fluency  and  vivacity  as  well  as  a  grammatical  correct- 
ness which  would  have  been  impossible  in  familiar  letters  a  few 
years  before,  but  shows  country  squires  discussing  about  book 
and  gathering  libraries.  The  very  character  of  the  author- 
ship of  the  time,  its  love  of  compendiums  and  abridgments 
of  the  scientific  and  historical  knowledge  of  its  day,  its 
dramatic  performances  or  mysteries,  the  commonplace  moral- 
ity of  its  poets,  the  popularity  of  its  ryhmed  chronicles,  are 
additional  proofs  that  literature  was  ceasing  to  be  the  posses- 
sion of  a  purely  intellectual  class  and  was  beginning  to  appeal 
to  the  people  at  large.  The  increased  use  of  linen  paper  in 
place  of  the  costlier  parchment  helped  in  the  popularization 
of  letters.  In  no  former  age  had  finer  copies  of  books  been 
produced  ;  in  none  had  so  many  been  transcribed.  This  in- 
creased demand  for  their  production  caused  the  processes  of 
copying  and  illuminating  manuscripts  to  be  transferred  from 
the  scriptoria  of  the  religious  houses  into  the  hands  of  trade- 
gilds,  like  the  Gild  of  St.  John  at  Bruges,  or  the  Brothers  of 
the  Pen  at  Brussels.  It  was,  in  fact,  this  increase  of  demand 
for  books,  pamphlets,  or  fly-sheets,  especially  of  a  grammat- 
ical or  religiqus  character,  in  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century  that  'brought  about  the  introduction  of  printing. 
We  meet  with  it  first  in  rude  sheets  simply  struck  off  from 
wooden  blocks,  "  block -books  "  as  they  are  now  called,  and 
later  on  in  works  printed  from  separate  and  moveable  types. 
Originating  at  Maintz  with  the  three  famous  printers,  Gut- 
enberg, Fust,  and  Schceffer,  the  new  process  traveled  south- 
ward to  Strasburg,  crossed  the  Alps  to  Venice,  where  it  lent 
vtself  through  the  Aldi  to  the  spread  of  Greek  literature  in 


THE   NEW   MONARCHY.      1471   TO   1509.  £76 

Europe,  and  then  floated  down  the  Khine  to  the  towns  of 
Flanders.  It  was  probably  at  the  press  of  Colard  Mansion, 
in  a  little  room  over  the  porch  of  St.  Donat's  at  Bruges,  that 
Caxton  learnt  the  art  which  he  was  the  first  to  introduce  into 
England. 

A  Kentish  boy  by  birth,  but  apprenticed  to  a  London 
mercer,  William  Caxton  had  already  spent  thirty  years  of  his 
manhood  in  Flanders,  as  Governor  of  the  English 
gild  of  Merchant  Adventurers  there,  when  we  find  Caxton. 
him  engaged  as  copyist  in  the  service  of  Edward's 
sister,  Duchess  Margaret  of  Burgundy.  But  the  tedious 
process  of  copying  was  soon  thrown  aside  for  the  new  art 
which  Colcird  Mansion  had  introduced  into  Bruges.  '•  For 
as  much  as  in  the  writing  of  the  same,"  Caxton  tells  us  in  the 
preface  to  his  first  printed  work,  the  Tales  of  Troy,  "  my  pen 
is  worn,  my  hand  weary  and  not  steadfast,  mine  eyes  dimmed 
with  over  much  looking  on  the  white  paper,  and  my  courage 
not  so  prone  and  ready  to  labor  as  it  hath  been,  and  that 
age  creepeth  on  me  daily  and  feebleth  all  the  body,  and  also 
because  I  have  promised  to  divers  gentlemen  and  to  my 
friends  to  address  to  them  as  hastily  as  I  might  the  said  book, 
therefore  I  have  practised  and  learned  at  my  great  charge  and 
dispense  to  ordain  this  said  book  in  print  after  the  manner 
and  form  as  ye  may  see,  and  is  not  written  with  pen  and  ink 
as  other  books  be,  to  the  end  that  every  man  may  have  them 
at  once,  for  all  the  books  of  this  story  here  emprynted  as  ye 
see  were  begun  in  one  day  and  also  finished  in  one  day." 
The  printing  press  was  the  precious  freight  he  brought  back 
to  England,  after  an  absence  of  five-and-chirty  years.  Through 
the  next  fifteen,  at  an  age  when  other  men  look  for  ease  and 
retirement,  we  see  him  plunging  with  characteristic  energy 
into  his  new  occupation.  His  "  red  pale"  or  heraldic  shield 
marked  with  a  red  bar  down  the  middle,  invited  buyers  to 
the  press  established  in  the  Almonry  at  Westminster,  a  little 
enclosure  containing  a  chapel  and  almshouses  near  the  west 
front  of  the  church,  where  the  alms  of  the  abbey  were  dis- 
tributed to  the  poor.  "  If  it  please  any  man,  spiritual  or 
temporal,"  runs  his  advertisement,  "  to  buy  any  pyes  of  two 
or  three  commemorations  of  Salisbury  all  emprynted  after 
the  form  of  the  present  letter,  which  be  well  and  truly  cor- 
rect, let  him  come  to  Westminster  into  the  Almonry  at  the 


376:  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

red  pale,  and  he  shall  have  them  good  chepe."  He  was  a 
practical  man  of  business,  as  this  advertisement  shows,  no 
rival  of  the  Venetian  Aldi  or  of  the  classical  printers  of  Rome, 
hut  resolved  to  get  a  living  from  his  trade,  supplying  priests 
with  service  hooks,  and  "preachers  with  sermons,  furnishing 
the'clerk  with  his  "Golden  Legend,"  and  knight  and  baron 
with  "joyous  and  pleasant  history  of  chivalry."  But  while 
careful  to  win  his  daily  bread,  he  found  time  to  do  much  for 
what  of  higher  literature  lay  fairly  to  hand.  He  printed  all 
the  English  poetry  of  any  moment  which  was  then  in  exist- 
ence. His  reverence  for  "  that  worshipful  man,  Geoffry 
Chaucer,"  who  "ought  to  be  eternally  remembered,"  is 
shown  not  merely  by  his  edition  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales," 
but  by  his  reprint  of  them  when  a  purer  text  of  the  poem 
offered  itself.  The  poems  of  Lydgateand  Gower  were  added 
to  those  of  Chaucer.  The  Chronicle  of  Brut  and  Higclen's 
"  Polychronicon  "  were  the  only  available  works  of  an  his- 
torical character  then  existing  in  the  English  tongue,  and 
Gaxton  not  only  printed  them  but  himself  continued  the 
latter  up  to  his  own  time.  A  translation  of  Boethius,  a 
version  of  the  ^Eneid  from  the  French,  and  a  tract  or  two 
of  Cicero,  were  the  stray  first-fruits  of  the  classical  press  in 
England. 

:  Busy  as  was  Caxton's  printing-press,  he  was  even  busier 
as  a  translator  than  as  a  printer.  More  than  four  thousand 
Caxton's  °^  n^s  Panted  pages  are  from  works  of  his  own 
Transli-  rendering.  The  need  of  these  translations  shows 
tions.  the  popular  drift  of  literature  at  the  time  ;  but 
keen  as  the  demand  seems  to  have  been,  there  is  nothing 
mechanical  in  the  temper  with  which  Caxton  prepared  to 
meet  it.  A  natural,  simple-hearted  literary  taste  and 
enthusiasm,  especially  for  the  style  and  forms  of  language, 
breaks  out  in  his  curious  prefaces.  "Having  no  work  in 
hand,",he  says  in  the  preface  to  his  Eneid,  "  I  sitting  in  my 
study  where  as  lay  many  divers  pamphlets  and  books,  hap- 
pened that  to  my  hand  came  a  little  book  in  French,  which 
late  was  translated  out  of  Latin  by  some  noble  clerk  of 
France — which  book  is  named  Enevdos,'and  made  in  Latin 
by  that  noble  poet  and  great  clerk  Vergyl — in  which  book  I 
had  great  pleasure  by  reason  of  the  fair  and  honest  termes 
and  wordes  in  French  which  I  never  saw  to-fore-like,  none  so 


THE   NEW   MONARCHY.      1471   TO   1509.  377 

pleasant  nor  so  well  ordered,  -which  book  as  me  seemed  should 
be  much  requisite  for  noble  men  to  see,  as  well  for  the 
eloquence  as  the  histories  ;  and  when  I  had  advised  rne  to 
this  said  book  I  deliberated  and  concluded  to  translate  it 
into  English,  and  forthwith  took  a  pen  and  ink  and  wrote  a 
leaf  or  twain."  But  the  work  of  translation  involved  a 
Choice  of  English  which  made  Cax ton's  work  important  in  the 
history  of  our  language.  He  stood  between  two  schools  of 
translation,  that  of  French  affectation  and  English  pedantry. 
It  was  a  moment  when  the  character  of  our  literary  tongue 
was  being  settled,  and  it  is  curious  to  see  in  his  own  words 
the  struggle  over  it  which  was  going  ou  in  Cax  ton's  time. 
"  Some  honest  and  great  clerks  have  been  with  me  and  de- 
sired me  to  write  the  most  curious  terms  that  I  could  find  ;" 
on  the  other  hand,  "some  gentlemen  of  late  blamed  me, 
saving  that  in  my  translations  I  had  over  many  curious  terms 
which  could  not  be  understood  of  common  people,  and 
desired  me  to  use  old  and  homely  terms  in  my  translations." 
"Fain  would  I  please  every  man,"  comments  the  good-hu- 
mored printer,  but  his  sturdy  sense  saved  him  alike  from  the 
temptations  of  the  court  and  the  schools.  His  own  taste 
pointed  to  English,  but  "  to  the  common  terms  that  be  daily 
used*'  rather  than  to  the  English  of  his  antiquarian  advisers. 
'•'  I  took  an  old  book  and  read  therein,  and  certainly  the 
English  was  so  rude  and  broad  I  could  not  well  understand 
it,"  while  the  Old-English  charters  which  the  Abbot  of 
"Westminster  lent  as  models  from  the  archives  of  his  house 
seemed  "  more  like  to  Dutch  than  to  English."  On  the 
other  hand,  to  adopt  current  phraseology  was  by  no  means 
easy  at  a  time  when  even  the  speech  of  common  talk  was  in  a 
state  of  rapid  flux.  "  Our  language  now  used  varieth  far 
from  that  which  was  used  and  spoken  when  I  was  born." 
Not  only  so,  but  the  tongue  of  each  shire  was  still  peculiar 
to  itself,  and  hardly  intelligible  to  men  of  another  county. 
"  Common  English  that  is  spoken  in  one  shire  varieth  from 
another  so  much,  that  in  my  days  happened  that  certain 
hierchants  were  in  a  ship  in  Thames,  for  to  have  sailed  over 
the  sea  into  Zealand,  and  for  lack  of  wind  they  tarried  at 
Foreland,  and  went  on  land  for  to  refresh  them.  And  one 
of  them,  named  Sheffield,  a  mercer,  came  into  a  house  and 
asked  for  meat,  and  especially  he  asked  them  after  eggs. 


378  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

And  the  good  wife  answered  that  she  could  speak  no  French. 
And  the  merchant  was  angry,  for  he  also  could  speak  no 
French,  but  would  have  had  eggs,  but  she  understood  him 
not.  And  then  at  last  another  said  he  would  have  eyren, 
then  the  good  wife  said  she  understood  him  well.  Lo  !  what 
should  a  man  in  these  days  now  write/'  adds  the  puzzled 
printer,  "  eggs  or  eyren  ?  certainly  it  is  hard  to  please  every 
man  by  cause  of  diversity  and  change  of  language."  His 
own  mother-tongue  too  was  that  of  "  Kent  in  the  Weald, 
where  I  doubt  not  is  spoken  as  broad  and  rude  English  as  in 
any  place  in  England ;"  and  coupling  this  with  his  long 
absence  in  Flanders,  we  can  hardly  wonder  at  the  confession 
he  makes  over  his  first  translation,  that  "  when  all  these 
things  came  to  fore  me,  after  that  I  had  made  and  written  a 
five  or  six  quires,  I  fell  in  despair  of  this  work,  and  purposed 
never  to  have  continued  therein,  and  the  quires  laid  apart, 
and  in  two  years  after  labored  no  more  in  this  work." 

He  was  still,  however,  busy  translating  when  he  died.  All 
difficulties,  in  fact,  were  lightened  by  the  general  interest 
Literature  which  his  labors  aroused.  When  the  length  of 
and  the  the  "Golden  Legend"  makes  him  "half  desper- 
Nobles.  ate  to  have  accomplished  it  "  and  ready  to  "lay 
it  apart,"  the  Earl  of  Arundel  solicits  him  in  nowise  to  leave 
it,  and  promises  a  yearly  fee  of  a  buck  in  summer  and  a  doe 
in  winter,  once  it  were  done.  "  Many  noble  and  divers  gen- 
tlemen of  this  realm  came  and  demanded  many  a"nd  often 
times  wherefore  I  have  not  made  and  imprinted  the  noble  his- 
tory of  the  '  San  Graal."  We  see  his  visitors  discussing 
with  the  sagacious  printer  the  historic  existence  of  Arthur. 
Duchess  Margaret  of  Somerset  lent  him  her  "  Blanchardine 
and  Eglantine  ;"  an  Archdeacon  of  Colchester  brought  him 
his  translation  of  the  work  called  "  Cato  ; "  a  mercer  of  Lon- 
don pressed  him  to  undertake  the  "  Royal  Book  "  of  Philip 
le  Bel.  The  queen's  brother,  Earl  Rivers,  chatted  with  him 
over  his  own  translation  of  the  "  Sayings  of  the  Philoso- 
phers." Even  kings  showed  their  interest  in  his  work  ;  his 
"Tully"was  printed  under  the  patronage  of  Edward  the 
Fourth,  his  "Order  of  Chivalry "  dedicated  to  Richard  the 
Third,  his  "  Facts  of  Arms"  published  at  the  desire  of  Henry 
the  Seventh.  The  fashion  of  large  and  gorgeous  libraries 
had  passed  from  the  French  to  the  English  princes  of  his  day  j 


THE  NEW   MONARCHY.       1471    TO   1509.  37U 

Henry  the  Sixth  had  a  valuable  collection  of  books;  that  of 
the  Louvre  was  seized  by  Duke  Humphrey  of  Gloucester,  and 
formed  the  basis  of  the  fine  library  which  he  presented  to  the 
University  of  Oxford.  Great  nobles  took  an  active  and  per- 
sonal part  in  the  literary  revival.  The  warrior,  Sir  John 
Fastolf,  was  a  well-known  lover  of  books.  Earl  Rivers  was 
himself  one  of  the  authors  of  the  day ;  he  found  leisure  in 
the  intervals  of  pilgrimages  and  politics  to  translate  the 
"  Sayings  of  the  Philosophers  "  and  a  couple  of  religious 
tracts  for  Caxton's  press.  A  friend  of  far  greater  intellectual 
distinction,  however,  than  these  was  found  in  John  Tiptoft, 
Earl  of  Worcester.  He  had  wandered  during  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  Sixth  in  search  of  learning  to  Italy,  had  studied 
at  her  universities,  and  become  a  teacher  at  Padua,  where 
the  elegance  of  his  Latinity  drew  tears  from  the  most  learned 
of  the  Popes,  Pius  the  Second,  better  known  as  ^Eneas 
Sylvius.  Caxton  can  find  no  words  warm  enough  to  express 
his  admiration  of  one  "which  in  his  time  flowered  in  virtue 
and  cunning,  to  whom  I  know  none  like  among  the  lords  of 
the  temporality  in  science  and  moral  virtue."  But  the  ruth- 
lessness  of  the  Renascence  appeared  in  Tiptoft  side  by  side 
with  its  intellectual  vigor,  and  the  fall  of  one  whose  cru- 
elty had  earned  him  the  surname  of  "the  'Butcher"  even 
amidst  the  horrors  of  civil  war  was  greeted  with  sorrow  by 
none  but  the  faithful  printer.  "  What  great  loss  was  it," he 
says  in  a  preface  long  after  his  fall,  "  of  that  noble,  virtuous, 
and  well-disposed  lord  ;  when  I  remember  and  advertise  his 
life,  his  science,  and  his  virtue,  me  thinketh  (God  not  dis- 
pleased) over  great  a  loss  of  such  a  man,  considering  his  estate 
and  cunning." 

Among  the  nobles  who  encouraged  the  work  of  Caxton  we 
have  already  seen  the  figure  of  the  king's  youngest  brother, 
Richard,  Duke  of  Gloucester.  Ruthless  and  sub- 
tie  as  Edward  himself,  the  Duke  at  once  came  to 
the  front  with  a  scheme  of  daring  ambition  when 
the  succession  of  a  boy  of  thirteen  woke  again  the  fierce 
rivalries  of  the  Court.  On  the  king's  death  Richard  has- 
tened to  secure  the  person  of  his  nephew,  Edward  the  Fifth, 
to  overthrow  the  power  of  the  queen's  family,  and  to  receive 
from  the  council  the  office  of  Protector  of  the  realm.  Little 
more  than  a  month  had  passed,  when  suddenly  entering  the 


380  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Council  chamber,  he  charged  Lord  Hastings,  the  chief  ad- 
viser of  the  late  king  and  loyal  adherent  of  his  sons,  with 
sorcery  and  designs  upon  his  life.  As  he  dashed  his  hand 
upon  the  tahle  ihe  room  was  filled  with  soldiers.  "  I  will  not 
dine,"  said  the  Duke,  addressing  Hastings,  "till  they  have 
brought  me  your  head  ;"  and  the  powerful  minister  was  hur- 
ried to  instant  execution  in  the  courtyard  of  the  Tower. 
The  Archbishop  of  York  and  the  Bishop  of  Ely  were  thrown 
into  prison,  and  every  check  on  Richard's  designs  was  re- 
moved. Only  one  step  remained  to  be  taken,  and  two  months 
after  his  brother's  death  the  Duke  consented  after  some  show 
of  reluctance  to  receive  a  petition  presented  by  a  body  of 
lords  and  others  in  the  name  of  the  three  estates,  which,  set- 
ting aside  Edward's  children  as  the  fruit  of  an  unlawful  mar- 
riage and  those  of  Clarence  as  disabled  by  his  attainder,  be- 
sought him  to  take  the  office  and  title  of  King.  His  young 
nephews,  Edward  V.  and  his  brother  the  Duke  of  York,  were 
flung  into  the  Tower,  and  there  murdered,  as  was  alleged,  by 
their  uncle's  order  ;  while  the  queen's  brother  and  son,  Lord 
Rivers  and  Sir  Richard  Grey,  were  hurried  to  execution. 
Morton,  the  Bishop  of  Ely,  imprisoned  under  Buckingham  in 
Wales,  took  advantage  of  the  disappearance  of  the  two  boys 
to  found  a  scheme  which  was  to  unite  the  discontented  York- 
ists with  what  remained  of  the  Lancastrian  party,  and  to  link 
both  bodies  in  a  wide  conspiracy.  All  the  descendants  of 
Henry  IV.  had  passed  away,  but  the  line  of  John  of  Gaunt 
still  survived.  The  Lady  Margaret  Beaufort,  the  lust  repre- 
sentative of  the  House  of  Somerset,  had  married  the  Earl  of 
Richmond,  Edmund  Tudor,  and  become  the  mother  of  Henry 
Tudor.  In  the  act  which  legitimated  the  Beanforts  an  illegal 
clause  had  been  inserted  by  Henry  IV.  which  barred  their 
succession  to  the  crown  ;  but  as  the  last  remaining  scion  of 
the  line  of  Lancaster  Henry's  claim  was  acknowledged  by  the 
partizans  of  his  House,  and  he  had  been  driven  to  seek  a 
refuge  in  Brittany  from  the  jealous  hostility  of  the  Yorkist 
sovereigns.  Morton's  plan  was  the  marriage  of  Henry  Tudor 
with  Elizabeth,  the  daughter  and  heiress  of  Edward  IV.,  and 
with  Buckingham's  aid  a  formidable  revolt  was  organized. 
The  outbreak  was  quickly  put  down.  But  daring  as  was 
Bichard's  natural  temper,  it  was  not  to  mere  violence  that  he 
trusted  in  his  seizure  of  the  throne.  During  his  brother's 


THE  NEW   MONARCHY.      1471   TO   1509.  881 

reign  he  had  watched  keenly  the  upgrowth  of  public  discon* 
tent  as  the  new  policy  of  the  monarchy  developed  itself,  and 
it  was  as  the  restorer  of  its  older  liberties  that  he  appealed 
for  popular  support.  "We  be  determined, "said  the  citizens 
of  London  in  a  petition  to  the  king,  "rather  to  adventure 
arid  to  commit  us  to  the  peril  of  our  lives  and  jeopardy  of 
death,  than  to  live  in  such  thraldom  and  bondage  as  we  have 
lived  long  time  heretofore,  oppressed  and  injured  by  extor- 
tions and  new  impositions  against  the  laws  of  God  and  man 
and  the  liberty  and  laws  of  this  realm,  wherein  every  English- 
man is  inherited.''  Eichard  met  the  appeal  by  again  con- 
voking Parliament,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  had  been  all  but 
discontinued  under  Edward,  and  by  sweeping  measures  of 
reform.  In  the  one  session  of  his  brief  reign  the  practise  of 
extorting  money  by  "benevolences"  was  declared  illegal, 
while  grants  of  pardons  and  remission  of  forfeitures  reversed 
in  some  measure  the  policy  of  terror  by  which  Edward  at  once 
held  the  country  in  awe  and  filled  his  treasury.  Numerous 
statutes  broke  the  slumbers  of  Parliamentary  legislation.  A 
series  of  mercantile  enactments  strove  to  protect  the  growing 
interests  of  English  commerce.  The  king's  love  of  literature 
showed  itself  in  the  provision  that  no  statutes  should  act  as 
a  hindrance  "to  any  artificer  or  merchant  stranger,  of  what 
nation  or  country  he  be,  for  bringing  unto  this  realm  or  sell- 
ing by  retail  or  otherwise  of  any  manner  of  books,  written  or 
imprinted."  His  prohibition  of  the  iniquitous  seizure  of 
goods  before  conviction  of  felony,  which  had  prevailed  dur- 
ing Edward's  reign,  his  liberation  of  the  bondmen  who  still 
remained  unenfranchised  on  the  royal  domain,  and  his  re- 
ligious foundations,  show  Richard's  keen  anxiety  to  purchase 
a  popularity  in  which  the  bloody  opening  of  his  reign  might' 
be  forgotten.  But  as  the  news  of  the  royal  children's  murder 
slowly  spread,  the  most  pitiless  stood  aghast  at  this  crowning 
deed  of  blood.  The  pretense  of  constitutional  rule,  too,  was 
soon  thrown  off,  and  a  levy  of  benevolences  in  defiance  of  thd 
statute  which  had  just  been  passed  woke  general  indignation. 
The  king  felt  himself  safe  ;  he  had  even  won  the  queen- 
mother's  consent  to  his  marriage  with  Elizabeth  ;  and  Henry, 
alone  and  in  exile,  seemed  a  small  danger.  But  a  wide 
conspiracy  at  once  revealed  itself  when  Henry  landed  at  Mil- 
ford  Haven,  and  advanced  through  Wales.  He  no  sooner 


382  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

encountered  the  royal  army  at  Bosworth  Field  in  Leicester- 
shire than  treachery  decided  the  day.  Abandoned  ere  the 
battle  began  by  a  division  o"f  his  forces  under  Lord  Stanley, 
and  as  it  opened  by  a  second  body  under  the  Earl  of  North- 
umberland, Richard  dashed,  with  a  cry  of  "  Treason,  Trea- 
son/' into  the  thick  of  the  fight.  In  the  fury  of  his  despair 
he  had  already  flung  the  Lancastrian  standard  to  the  ground 
and  hewed  his  way  into  the  very  presence  of  his  rival,  when 
he  fell  overpowered  by  numbers,  and  the  crown  which  he  had 
worn,  and  which  was  found  as  the  struggle  ended  lying  near 
a  hawthorn  bush,  was  placed  on  the  head  of  the  conqueror. 

With  the  accession  of  Henry  the  Seventh  ended  the  long 

bloodshed  of  the  civil  wars.     The  two   warring  lines  were 

united  by  his  marriage  with  Elizabeth  :  his  only 

Seventh6  dangerous  rivals  were  removed  by  tho  successive 
deaths  of  the  nephews  of  Edward  the  Fourth,  John 
de  la  Pole,  Earl  of  Lincoln,  a  son  of  Edward's  sister,  who  had 
been  acknowledged  as  his  successor  by  Richard  the  Third  ; 
and  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  a  son  of  Edward's  brother  the 
Duke  of  Clarence,  and  next  male  heir  of  the  Yorkist  line. 
Two  remarkable  impostors  succeeded  for  a  time  in  exciting 
formidable  revolts,  Lambert  Simnel,  under  the  name  of  the 
Earl  of  Warwick,  and  Perkin  Warbeck,  who  personated  the 
Duke  of  York,  the  second  of  the  children  murdered  in  the 
Tower.  Defeat,  however,  reduced  the  first  to  the  post  of 
scullion  in  the  royal  kite-hen  ;  and  the  second,  after  far 
stranger  adventures,  and  the  recognition  of  his  claims  by  the 
Kings  of  Scotland  and  France,  as  well  as  by  the  Duchess- 
Dowager  of  Burgundy,  whom  he  claimed  as  his  aunt,  was 
captured  and  four  years  later  hanged  at  Tyburn.  Revolt 
only  proved  more  clearly  the  strength  which  had  been  given 
to  the  New  Monarchy  by  the  revolution  which  had  taken 
place  in  the  art  of  war.  The  introduction  of  gunpowder  had 
ruined  feudalism.  The  mounted  and  heavily-armed  knight 
gave  way  to  the  meaner  footman.  Fortresses  which  had 
been  impregnable  against  the  attacks  of  the  Middle  Ages 
crumbled  before  the  new  artillery.  Although  gunpowder 
had  been  in  use  as  early  as  Crecy,  it  was  not  till  the  accession 
of  the  House  of  Lancaster  that  it  was  really  brought  into 
effective  employment  as  a  military  resource.  But  the  revolu- 
tion in  warfare  was  immediate.  The  wars  of  Henry  the  Fifth 


THE  NEW   MONARCHY.      1471   TO   1509.  383 

were  wars  of  sieges.  The  "  Last  of  the  Barons,"  as  Warwick 
has  picturesquely  been  styled,  relied  mainly  on  his  train  cf 
artillery.  It  was  artillery  that  turned  the  day  at  Barnet  and 
Tewkesbury,  and  that  gave  Henry  the  Seventh  his  victory 
over  the  formidable  dangers  which  assailed  him.  The 
strength  which  the  change  gave  to  the  crown  was,  in  fact, 
almost  irresistible.  Throughout  the  Middle  Ages  the  call  of 
a  great  baron  had  been  enough  to  raise  a  formidable  revolt. 
Yeomen  and  retainers  took  down  the  bow  from  their  chimney 
corner,  knights  buckled  on  their  armor,  and  in  a  few  days  an 
army  threatened  the  throne.  But  without  artillery  such  an 
army  was  no\v  helpless,  and  the  one  train  of  artillery  in  the 
kingdom  lay  at  the  disposal  of  the  king.  It  was  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  strength  which  enabled  the  new  sovereign 
to  quietly  resume  the  policy  of  Edward  the  Fourth.  He  was 
forced,  .indeed,  by  the  circumstances  of  his  descent  to  basehis 
right  to  the  .throne  on  a  Parliamentary  title.  Without  ref- 
erence either  to  the  claim  of  blood  or  conquest,  the  Houses 
enacted  simply  "  that  the  inheritance  of  the  Crown  should 
be,  rest,  remain,  and  abide  in  the  most  Royal  person  of  their 
sovereign  lord,  King  Henry  the  Seventh,  and  the  heirs  of  his 
body  lawfully  ensuing."  But  the  policy  of  Edward  was  faith- 
fully followed,  and  Parliament  was  but  twice  convened  dur- 
ing the  last  thirteen  years  of  Henry's  reign.  The  chief  aim, 
indeed,  of  the  king  was  the  accumulation  of  a  treasure  which 
would  relieve  him  from  the  need  of  ever  appealing  for  its  aid. 
Subsidies  granted  for  the  support  of  wars  which  Henry  evaded 
formed  the  base  of  a  royal  treasure,  which  was  swelled  by  the 
revival  of  dormant  claims  of  the  crown,  by  the  exaction  of 
fines  for  the  breach  of  forgotten  tenures,  and  by  a  host  of 
petty  extortions.  A  dilemma  of  his  favorite  minister,  which 
received  the  name  of  "  Morton's  fork,"  extorted  gifts  to  the 
exchequer  from  men  who  lived  handsomely  on  the  ground  that 
their  wealth  was  manifest,  and  from  those  who  lived  plainly, 
on  the  plea  that  economy  had  made  them  wealthy.  Still 
greater  sums  were  drawn  from  those  who  were  compromised 
in  the  revolts  which  checkered  the  king's  rule.  So  success- 
ful were  these  efforts  that  at  the  end  of  his  reign  Henry  be- 
queathed a  hoard  of  two  millions  to  his  successor.  The 
same  imitation  of  Edward's  policy  was  seen  in  Henry's  civil 
government.  Broken  as  was  the  strength  of  the  baronage, 


384  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

there  still  remained  lords  whom  the  new  monarch  watched 
with  a  jealous  solicitude.  Their  power  lay  in  the  hosts  of 
disorderly  retainers  who  swarmed  round  their  houses,  ready 
to  furnish  a  force  in  Case  of  revolt,  while  in  peace  they  became 
centers  of  outrage  and  defiance  to  the  law.  Edward  had 
ordered  the  dissolution  of  these  military  households  in  his 
Statute  of  Liveries,  and  the  statute  was  enforced  by  Henry 
with  the  utmost  severity.  On  a  visit  to  the  Earl  of  Oxford, 
one  of  the  most  devoted  adherents  of  the  Lancastrian  cause, 
the  king  found  two  long  lines  of  liveried  retainers  drawn  up 
to  receive  him.  "  I  thank  you  for  your  good  cheer,  my  Lord," 
said  Henry  as  they  parted,  "but  I  may  not  endure  to  have 
my  laws  broken  in  my  sight.  My  attorney  must  speak  with 
you."  The  Earl  was  glad  to  escape  with  a  fine  of  £10,000. 
It  was  with  a  special  view  to  the  suppression  of  this  danger 
that  Henry  employed  the  criminal  jurisdiction  of  the  Royal 
Council.  He  appointed  a  committee  of  his  Council  as  a  reg- 
ular court,  to  which  the  place  where  it  usually  sat  gave  the 
name  of  the  Court  of  Star  Chamber.  The  king's  aim  was 
probably  little  more  than  a  purpose  to  enforce  order  on  the 
land  by  bringing  the  great  nobles  before  his  own  judgment- 
seat  ;  but  the  establishment  of  the  court  as  a  regular  and  no 
longer  an  exceptional  tribunal,  whose  traditional  powers  were 
confirmed  by  Parliamentary  statute,  and  where  the  absence 
of  a  jury  canceled  the  prisoner's  right  to  be  tried  by  his 
peers,  furnished  his  son  with  his  readiest  instrument  of 
tyranny.  But  though  the  drift  of  Henry's  policy  was  steady 
in  the  direction  of  despotism,  his  temper  seemed  to  promise 
the  reign  of  a  poetic  dreamer  rather  than  of  a  statesman. 
The  spare  form,  the  sallow  face,  the  quick  eye,  the  shy, 
solitary  humor  broken  by  outbursts  of  pleasant  converse  or 
genial  sarcasm,  told  of  an  inner  concentration  and  enthusiasm. 
His  tastes  were  literary  and  artistic  ;  he  was  a  patron  of  the 
new  printing  press,  a  lover  of  books  and  of  art.  But  life  gave 
Henry  little  leisure  for  dreams  or  culture.  Wrapt  in  schemes 
of  foreign  intrigue,  struggling  with  dangers  at  home,  he 
could  take  small  part  in  the  one  movement  which  stirred 
England  during  his  reign,  the  great  intellectual  revolution 
which  bears  the  name  of  the  Revival  of  Letters. 


THE  NEW   LEARNING.      1509  TO   1520.  385 


Section  IV.— The  New  I/earning.    1509—1520. 

[Authorities.— The  general  literary  history  of  this  period  is  fully  and  accurately 
given  by  Mr.  Hallam  ("  Literature  of  Europe  "),  and  in  a  confused  but  interesting 
way  by  Warton  (•  History  of  English  Poetry  ").  The  most  accessible  edition  of 
the  typical  book  of  the  Revival,  More's  "  Utopia,"  is  the  Elizabethan  translation 
published  by  Mr.  Arber  ("English  Reprints."  1869).  The  history  of  Erasmus  in 
England  must  be  followed  in  his  own  entertaining  Letters,  abstracts  of  some  of 
which  will  be  found  in  the  well-known  biography  by  Jortiii.  Colet's  work  and  the 
theological  aspect  of  the  Revival  has  been  described  by  Mr.  Saebohm  ("The  Ox- 
ford Reformers  of  1498  ");  for  Warham's  share  I  have  ventured  to  borrow  a  little 
from  a  paper  of  mine  on  "  Lambeth  and  the  Archbishops."  in  "  Stray  Studies."] 

Great  as  were  the  issues  of  Henry's  policy,  it  shrinks  into 
littleness  if  we  turn  from  it  to  the  weighty  movements  which 
were  now  stirring  the  minds  of  men.  The  world 
was  passing  through  changes  more  momentous 
than  any  it  had  witnessed  since  the  victory 
of  Christianity  and  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Its 
physical  bounds  were  suddenly  enlarged.  The  discoveries 
of  Copernicus  revealed  to  man  the  secret  of  the  universe. 
Portuguese  mariners  doubled  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope 
and  anchored  their  merchant  fleets  in  the  harbors  of  India. 
Columbus  crossed  the  untraversed  ocean  to  add  a  New 
World  to  the  old.  Sebastian  Cabot,  starting  from  the  port 
of  Bristol,  threaded  his  way  among  the  icebergs  of  Lab- 
rador. This  sadden  contact  with  new  lands,  new  faiths,  new 
races  of  men,  quickened  the  slumbering  intelligence  of 
Europe  into  a  strange  curiosity.  The  first  book  of  voyages 
that  told  of  the  western  world,  the  Travels  of  Amerigo  Ves- 
pucci, were  soon  "in  everybody's  hands."  The  "Utopia" 
of  More,  in  its  wide  range  of  speculation  on  every  subject  of 
human  thought  and  action,  tells  us  how  roughly  and  utterly 
the  narrowness  and  limitation  of  human  life  had  been  broken 
up.  The  capture  of  Constantinople  by  the  Turks,  and  the 
flight  of  its  Greek  scholars  to  the  shores  of  Italy,  opened 
anew  the  science  and  literature  of  the  older  world  at  the  very 
hour  when  the  intellectual  energy  of  the  Middle  Ages  had 
sunk  into  exhaustion.  The  exiled  Greek  scholars  wore  wel- 
comed in  Italy,  and  Florence,  so  long  the  home  of  freedom 
and  of  art.  became  the  home  of  an  intellectual  revival.  The 
poetry  of  Homer,  the  drama  of  Sophocles,  the  philosophy  of 
Aristotle  and  of  Plato  woke  again  to  life  beneath  the  shadow 
25 


386  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  the  mighty  dome  with  which  Brunelleschi  had  just  crowned 
the  City  by  the  Arno.  All  the  restless  energy  which  Florence 
had  so  long  thrown  into  the  cause  of  liberty  she  flung,  now 
that  her  liberty  was  reft  from  her,  into  the  cause  of  letters. 
The  galleys  of  her  merchants  brought  back  manuscripts  from 
the  East  as  the  most  precious  portion  of  their  freight.  In 
the  palaces  of  her  nobles  fragments  of  classic  sculpture  ranged 
themselves  beneath  the  frescoes  of  Ghirlandajo.  The  recov- 
ery of  a  treatise  of  Cicero's,  or  a  tract  of  Sallust's  from  the 
dust  of  a  monastic  library  was  welcomed  by  the  group  of 
statesmen  and  artists  who  gathered  in  the  Kucellai  gardens 
with  a  thrill  of  enthusiasm.  Foreign  scholars  soon  flocked 
over  the  Alps  to  learn  Greek,  the  key  of  the  new  knowledge, 
from  the  Florentine  teachers.  Grocyn,  a  fellow  of  New  Col- 
lege, was  perhaps  the  first  Englishman  who  studied  under 
the  Greek  exile,  Chalcondylas  ;  and  the  Greek  lectures  which 
he  delivered  in  Oxford  on  his  return,  mark  the  opening  of  a 
new  period  in  our  history.  Physical  as  well  as  literary  ac- 
tivity awoke  with  the  re-discovery  of  the  teachers  of  Greece, 
and  the  continuous  progress  of  English  science  may  be  dated 
from  the  day  when  Linacre,  another  Oxford  student,  re- 
turned from  the  lectures  of  the  Florentine  Politian  to 
revive  the  older  tradition  of  medicine  by  his  translation  of 
Galen. 

But  from  the  first  it  was  manifest  that  the  revival  of  letters 
would  take  a  tone  in  England  very  different  from  the  tone  it 

had  taken  in  Italy,  a  toneless  literary,  less  largely 
Oxf*rd*     human>    Dut  more  moral,  more    religious,   more 

practical  in  its  bearings  both  upon  society  and 
politics.  The  awakening  of  a  rational  Christianity,  whether 
in  England  or  in  the  Teutonic  world  at  large,  began  with  the 
Italian  studies  of  John  Colet  ;  and  the  vigor  and  earnestness 
of  Colet  were  the  best  proof  of  the  strength  with  which  the 
new  movement  was  to  affect  English  religion.  He  came  back 
to  Oxford  utterly  untouched  by  the  Platonic  mysticisms  or 
the  semi-serious  infidelity  which  characterized  the  group  of 
scholars  round  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent.  He  was  hardly  more 
influenced  by  their  literary  enthusiasm.  The  knowledge  of 
Greek  seems  to  have  had  one  almost  exclusive  end  for  him,  and 
this  was  a  religions  end.  Greek  was  the  key  by  which  he  could 
unlock  the  Gospels  and  the  New  Testament,  and  in  these  he 


THE  NEW   LEARNING.      1509  TO   1520.  887 

thought  that  he  could  find  a  new  religious  standing-ground. 
It  was  this  resolve  of  Colet  to  fling  aside  the  traditional  dog- 
mas of  his  day  and  to  discover  a  rational  and  practical  re- 
ligion in  the  Gospels  themselves,  which  gave  its  peculiar 
stamp  to  the  theology  of  the  Renascence.  His  faith  stood 
simply  on  a  vivid  realization  of  the  person  of  Christ.  In  the 
prominence  which  such  a  view  gave  to  the  moral  life,in  his  free 
criticism  of  the  earlier  Scriptures,  in  his  tendency  to  simple 
forms  of  doctrine  arid  confessions  of  faith,  Colet  struck  the 
keynote  of  a  mode  of  religious  thought  as  strongly  in  contrast 
with  that  of  the  later  Reformation  as  with  that  of  Catholicism 
itself.  The  allegorical  and  mystical  theology  on  which  the 
Middle  Ages  had  spent  their  intellectual  vigor  to  such  little 
purpose  fell  at  one  blow  before  his  rejection  of  all  but  the 
historical  and  gramrn.itical  sense  of  the  Biblical  text.  The 
great  fabric  of  belief  built  up  by  the  medieval  doctors  seemed 
to  him  simply  "the  corruptions  of  the  schoolmen."  In  the 
life  and  sayings  of  its  Founder  he  found  a  simple  and  rational 
Christianity,  whose  fittest  expression  was  the  Apostle's  creed. 
"  About  the  rest,"  he  said  with  characteristic  impatience, 
"let  divines  dispute  as  they  will."  Of  his  attitude  towards 
the  coarser  aspects  of  the  current  religion  his  behavior  at  a 
later  time  before  the  famous  shrine  of  St.  Thomas  at  Canter- 
bury gives  us  a  rough  indication.  As  the  blaze  of  its  jewels, 
its  costly  sculptures,  its  elaborate  metal- work  burst  on  Colet's 
view,  he  suggested  with  bitter  irony  that  a  saint  so  lavish  to 
the  poor  in  his  lifetime  would  certainly  prefer  that  they 
should  possess  the  wealth  heaped  round  him  since  his  death. 
With  petulant  disgust  he  rejected  the  rags  of  the  martyr  which 
were  offered  for  his  adoration,  and  the  shoe  which  was  offered 
for  his  kiss.  The  earnestness,  the  religious  zeal,  the  very  im- 
patience arid  want  of  sympathy  with  the  past  which  we  see  in 
every  word  and  act  of  the  man,  burst  out  in  the  lectures  on 
St.  Paul's  Epistles,  which  he  delivered  at  Oxford.  Even  to 
the  most  critical  among  his  hearers  he  seemed  "like  one  in- 
spired, raised  in  voice,  eye,  his  whole  countenance  and  mien, 
out  of  himself."  Severe  as  was  the  outer  life  of  the  new 
teacher,  a  severity  marked  by  his  plain  black  robe  and  the 
frugal  table  which  he  preserved  amidst  his  Jatcr  dignities, 
his  lively  conversation,  his  fiank  simplicity,  the  purity  and 
nobleness  of  his  life,  even  the  keen  outbursts  of  his  trouble- 


HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

some  temper,  endeared  him  to  a  group  of  scholars  among 
whom  Erasmus  arid  Thomas  More  stood  in  the  foremost 
rank. 

"  Greece  has  crossed  the  Alps,"  cried  the  exiled  Argyrop- 
ulos  on  hearing  a  translation  of  Thucydides  by  the  German 
Reuchlin  ;  but  the  glory,  whether  of  Reuchlin  or 
of  the  Tentonic  scholars  who  followed  him,  was 
soon  eclipsed  by  that  of  Erasmus.  His  enormous 
industry,  the  vast  store  of  classical  learning  which  he 
gradually  accumulated,  Erasmus  shared  with  others  of  his 
day.  In  patristic  reading  he  may  have  stood  beneath  Luther  ; 
in  originality  and  profoundness  of  thought  he  was  certainly 
inferior  to  More.  His  theology,  though  he  made  a  far  greater 
mark  on  the  world  by  it  than  even  by  his  scholarship,  he 
derived  almost  without  change  from  Colet.  But  his  com- 
bination of  vast  learning  with  keen  observation,  of  acuteness 
of  remark  with  a  lively  fancy,  of  genial  wit  with  a  perfect 
good  sense — his  union  of  as  sincere  a  piety  and  as  profound 
a  zeal  for  rational  religion  as  Colet's  with  a  dispassionate 
fairness  towards  older  faiths,  a  large  love  of  secular  culture, 
and  a  genial  freedom  and  play  of  mind — this  union  was  his 
own,  and  it  was  through  this  that  Erasmus  embodied  for  the 
Teutonic  peoples  the  quickening  influence  of  the  Ne\v  Learn- 
ing during  the  long  scholar-life  which  began  at  Paris  and 
ended  amidst  darkness  and  sorrow  at  Basel.  At  the  time  of 
Colet's  return  from  Italy  Erasmus  was  young  and  compar- 
atively unknown,  but  the  chivalrous  enthusiasm  of  the  now 
movement  breaks  out  in  his  letters  from  Paris  whither  he  h  id 
wandered  as  a  scholar.  "  1  have  given  up  my  whole  soul  to 
Greek  learning/'  he  writes,  "  and  as  soon  as  I  get  any 
monev  I  shall  buy  Greek  books — and  then  I  shall  buy  some 
clothes."  It  was  in  despair  of  reaching  Italy  that  the  young 
scholar  made  his  way  to  Oxford,  as  the  one  place  on  this 
side  the  Alps  where  he  would  be  enabled  through  the  teach- 
ing of  Grocyn  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  Greek.  But  he  hud 
no  sooner  arrived  there  than  all  feeling  of  regret  vanished 
away.  "I  have  found  in  Oxford,"  he  writes,  ''so  much 
polish  and  learning  that  now  I  hardly  caro  about  goins:  to 
Italy  at  all,  save  for  the  sake  of  having  been  there.  When 
I  listen  to  my  friend  Colet  it  seems  like  listening  to  Plato 
himself.  "Who  does  not  wonder  at  the  wide  range  of  Grocyn's 


THE   NEW   LEARNING.      1509   TO   1520.  389 

knowledge  ?  What  can  be  more  searching,  deep,  and  refined 
than  the  judgment  of  Linacre  ?  When  did  Nature  mold 
a  temper  more  gentle,  endearing,  and  happy  than  the  temper 
of  Thomas  More  ?  " 

But  the  new  movement  was  far  from  being  bounded  by 
the  walls  of  Oxford.  The  silent  influences  of  time  were 
working,  indeed,  steadily  for  its  cause.  The 
printing  press  was  making  letters  the  common  ^g^f  of 
property  of  all.  In  the  last  thirty  years  of  the 
fifteenth  century  ten  thousand  editions  of  books  and  pam- 
phlets are  said  to  have  been  published  throughout  Europe,  the 
most  important  half  of  them  of  course  in  Italy  ;  and  all  the 
Latin  authors  were  accessible  to  every  student  before  it 
closed.  Almost  all  the  more  valuable  authors  of  Greece 
were  published  in  the  first  twenty  years  of  the  century  which 
followed.  The  profound  influence  of  tiiis  burst  of  the  two 
great  classic  literatures  upon  the  world  at  once  made  itself 
felt.  "  For  the  first  time,"  to  use  the  picturesque  phrase  of  M. 
Taine,  "  men  opened  their  eyes  and  saw."  The  human  mind 
seemed  to  gather  new  energies  at  the  sight  of  the  vast  field 
which  opened  before  it.  It  attacked  every  province  of  knowl- 
edge, and  it  transformed  all.  Experimental  science,  the 
science  of  philology,  the  science  of  politics,  the  critical  in- 
vestigation of  religious  truth,  all  took  their  origin  from  the 
Renascence — this  "  New  Birth  "  of  the  world.  Art,  if  it  lost 
much  in  purity  and  propriety,  gained  in  scope  and  in  the 
fearlessness  of  its  love  of  Nature.  Literature,  if  crushed  for 
the  moment  by  the  overpowering  attraction  of  the  great  models , 
of  Greece  and  Rome,  revived  with  a  grandeur  of  form,  a 
large  spirit  of  humanity,  such  as  it  had  never  known  since 
their  day.  In  England  the  influence  of  the  new  movement 
extended  far  beyond  the  little  group  in  which  it  had  a  few 
years  before  seemed  concentrated.  The  great  churchmen 
became  its  patrons.  Langton,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  took 
delight  in  examining  the  young  scholars  of  his  episcopal 
family  every  evening,  and  sent  all  the  most  promising  of 
them  to  study  across  the  Alps.  Learning  found  a  yet 
warmer  friend  in  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  Immersed 
as  Archbishop  Warhatn  was  in  the  business  of  the  state,  he 
was  no  mere  politician.  The  eulogies  which  Erasmus  lav- 
ished on  him  while  he  lived,  his  praises  of  the  Primate's 


390  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

learning,  of  his  ability  in  business,  his  pleasant  humor,  bis 
modesty,  his  fidelity  to  friends,  may  pass  for  what  eulogies  of 
living  men  are  commonly  worth.  But  it  is  difficult  to  doubt 
the  sincerity  of  the  glowing  picture  which  he  drew  of  him 
when  death  had  destroyed  all  interest  in  mere  adulation. 
The  letters  indeed  which  passed  between  the  great  church- 
man and  the  wandering  scholar,  the  quiet,  simple-hearted 
grace  which  amidst  constant  instances  of  munificence  pre- 
served the  perfect  equality  of  literary  friendship,  the  en- 
lightened piety  to  which  Erasmus  could  address  the  noble 
words  of  his  preface  to  St.  Jerome,  confirm  tbe  judgment 
of  every  good  man  of  Warham's  day.  In  the  simplicity  of 
his  life  the  Archbishop  offered  a  striking  contrast  to  the 
luxurious  nobles  of  his  time.  He  cared  nothing  for  the 
pomp,  the  sensual  pleasures,  thehunting  and  dicing  in  which 
they  too  commonly  indulged.  An  hour's  pleasant  reading,  a 
quiet  chat  with  some  learned  newcomer,  alone  broke  the 
endless  round  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  business.  Few  men 
realized  so  thoroughly  as  Warham  the  new  conception  of  an 
intellectual  and  moral  equality  before  which  the  old  social 
distinctions  of  the  world  were  to  vanish  away.  His  favorite 
relaxation  was  to  sup  among  a  group  of  scholarly  visitors, 
enjoying  their  fun  and  retorting  with  fun  of  his  own.  But 
the  scholar-world  found  more  than  supper  or  fun  at  the 
Primate's  board.  His  purse  was  ever  open  to  relieve  their 
poverty.  "  Had  I  found  such  a  patron  in  my  youth, "Eras- 
mus wrote  long  after,  "  I  too  might  have  been  counted 
.among  the  fortunate  ones."  It  was  with  Grocyn  that  Eras- 
mus on  a  second  visit  to  England  rowed  up  the  river  to  War- 
ham's  board  at  Lambeth,  and  in  spite  of  an  unpromising 
beginning  the  acquaintance  turned  out  wonderfully  well. 
The  Primate  loved  him,  Erasmus  wrote  home,  as  if  he  were 
his  father  or  his  brother,  and  his  generosity  surpassed  that 
of  all  his  friends.  He  offered  him  a  sinecure,  and  when  he 
declined  it  he  bestowed  on  him  a  pension  of  a  hundred 
crowns  a  year.  When  Erasmus  wandered  to  Paris  it  was 
Warham's  invitation  which  recalled  him  to  England.  When 
the  rest  of  his  patrons  left  him  to  starve  on  the  sour  beer  of 
Cambridge  it  was  Warham  who  sent  him  fifty  angels.  "  I 
wish  there  were  thirty  legions  of  them,"  the  Primate  puns 
in  his  good-huuiored  way. 


HENRY  VIII. 
After  the  1'uinting  by  Hans  Holbein,  Windsor  Castle,  England. 


THE  NEW   LEARNING.      1509  TO   1520.  891 

Eeal,  however,  as  this  progress  was,  the  group  of  scholars 
who  represented  the  New  Learning  in  England  still  remained 
a  little  one  through  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Seventh.  But  a  "New  Order,"  to  use  their 
own  enthusiastic  term,  dawned  on  them  with 
the  accession  of  his  son.  Henry  the  Eighth  had  hardly 
completed  his  eighteenth  year  when  he  mounted  the  throne, 
but  the  beauty  of  his  person,  his  vigor  and  skill  in  arms, 
seemed  matched  by  a  frank  and  generous  temper  and  a 
nobleness  of  political  aims.  He  gave  promise  of  a  more 
popular  system  of  government  by  checking  at  once  the 
extortion  which  had  been  practised  under  color  of  enforcing 
forgotten  laws,  and  by  bringing  his  father's  financial  minis- 
ters, Empson  and  Dudley,  to  trial  on  a  charge  of  treason. 
No  accession  ever  excited  higher  expectations  among  a 
people  than  that  of  Henry  the  Eighth.  Pole,  his  bitterest 
enemy,  confessed  at  a  later  time,  that  the  king  was  of  a 
temper  at  the  beginning  of  his  reign  "from  which  all  excel- 
lent things  might  have  been  hoped."  Already  in  stature 
and  strength  a  king  among  his  fellows,  taller  than  any, 
bigger  than  any,  a  mighty  wrestler,  a  mighty  hunter,  an 
archer  of  the  best,  a  knight  who  bore  down  rider  after  rider 
in  the  tourney,  the  young  monarch  combined  with  his  bodily 
lordliness  a  largeness  and  versatility  of  mind  which  was  to  be 
the  special  characteristic  of  the  age  that  had  begun.  His 
sympathies  were  known  to  be  heartily  with  the  New  Learn- 
ing ;  for  Henry  was  not  only  himself  a  fair  scholar,  but  even 
in  boyhood  had  roused  by  his  wit  and  attainments  the  wonder 
of  Erasmus.  The  great  scholar  hurried  back  to  England  to 
pour  out  his  exultation  in  the  "Praise  of  Folly/'  a  song  of 
triumph  over  the  old  world  of  ignorance  and  bigotry  which 
was  to  vanish  away  before  the  light  and  knowledge  of  the 
new  reign.  Folly,  in  his  amusing  little  book,  mounts  a 
pnlpit  in  cap  and  bells  and  pelts  with  her  satire  the  absurd- 
ities of  the  world  around  her,  the  superstition  of  the  monk, 
the  pedantry  of  the  grammarian,  the  dogmatism  of  the 
doctors  of  the  schools,  the  selfishness  and  tyranny  of  kings. 

The  irony  of  Erasmus  was  backed  by  the  earnest  effort  of 
Colet.  Four  years  before  he  had  been  called  from  Oxford  to 
the  Deanery  of  St.  Paul's,  when  he  became  the  great  preacher 
of  his  day,  the  predecessor  of  Latimer  in  hia  simplicity, 


392  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

his  directness,  and  his  force.  He  seized  the  opportunity  to 
commence  the  work  of  educational  reform  by  the  founda- 

The  New  t'°11  °^  ^s  ONV11  Grammar  School,  beside  St.  Paul's. 
Learmng and  The  bent  of  its  founder's  mind  was  shown  by  the 

E^uc^tion.  i,mige  Of  the  Child  Jesus  over  the  master's  chair 
with  the  words  "  Hear  ye  Him  "  graven  beneath  it.  "  Lift  up 
your  little  white  hands  for  me,"  wrote  the  Dean  to  his  scholars, 
in  words  which  show  the  tenderness  that  lay  beneath  the 
stern  outer  seeming  of  the  man, — "  for  me  which  prayeth  for 
you  to  God."  All  the  educational  designs  of  the  reformers  were 
carried  out  in  the  new  foundation.  The  old  methods  of  in- 
struction were  superseded  by  fresh  grammars  composed  by 
Erasmus  and  other  scholars  for  its  use.  Lilly,  an  Oxford 
student  who  had  studied  Greek  in  the  East,  was  placed  at  its 
head.  The  injunctions  of  the  founder  aimed  at  the  union  of 
rational  religion  with  sound  learning,  at  the  exclusion  of  the 
scholastic  logic,  and  at  the  steady  diffusion  of  the  two  classi- 
cal literatures.  The  more  bigoted  of  the  clergy  were  quick 
to  take  alarm.  "No  wonder/'  More  wrote  to  the  Dean, 
"  your  school  raises  a  storm,  for  it  is  like  the  wooden  horse 
in  which  armed  Greeks  were  hidden  for  the  ruin  of  barbarous 
Troy."  But  the  cry  of  alarm  passed  helplessly  away.  Not 
only  did  the  study  of  Greek  creep  gradually  into  the  schools 
which  existed,  but  the  example  of  Colet  was  followed  by  a 
crowd  of  imitators.  More  grammar  schools,  it  has  been 
said,  were  founded  in  the  latter  years  of  Henry  than  in  the 
three  centuries  before.  The  impulse  grew  only  stronger  as 
the  direct  influence  of  the  New  Learning  passed  away.  The 
grammar  schools  of  Edward  the  Sixth  and  of  Elizabeth,  in  a 
word  the  system  of  middle-class  education  which  by  the 
close  of  the  century  had  changed  the  very  face  of  England, 
were  amongst  the  results  of  Colet's  foundation  of  St.  Paul's. 
But  the  "armed  Greeks"  of  More's  apologue  found  a  yet 
wider  field  in  the  reform  of  the  higher  education  of  the 
country.  On  the  Universities  the  influence  of  the  New 
Learning  was  like  a  passing  from  death  to  life.  Erasmus 
gives  us  a  picture  of  what  happened  at  Cambridge,  where 
he  was  himself  for  a  time  a  teacher  of  Greek.  "  Scarcely 
thirty  years  ago  nothing  was  taught  here  but  the  Parva 
Logic-alin,  Alexander,  antiquated  exercises  from  Aristotle, 
and  the  Qucestiones  of  Scotus.  As  time  went  on  better 


THE  NEW   LEARNING.      1509   TO    1520.  393 

studies  were  added,  mathematics,  a  new,  or  at  any  rate  a 
renovated,  Aristotle,  and  a  knowledge  of  Greek  literature. 
What  lias  been -the  result  ?  The  University  is  now  so  flour- 
ishing that  it  can  compete  with  the  best  universities  of  the 
age/'  Latimer  and  Croke  returned  from  Italy  and  carried 
on  the  work  of  Erasmus  at  Cambridge,  where  Fisher,  Bishcp 
of  Rochester,  himself  one  of  the  foremost  scholars  of  the  new 
movement,  lent  it  his  powerful  support.  At  Oxford  the  Re- 
vival met  with  a  fiercer  opposition.  The  contest  took  the 
form  of  boyish  frays,  in  which  the  young  partizans  and 
opponents  of  the  New  Learning  took  sides' as  Greeks  and 
Trojans.  The  king  himself  had  to  summon  one  of  its 
fiercest  enemies  to  Woodstock,  and  to  impose  silence  on  the 
tirades  which  were  delivered  from  the  University  pulpit. 
The  preacher  alleged  that  he  was  carried  away  by  the  Spirit. 
"Yes,"  retorted  the  king,  "  by  the  spirit,  not  of  wisdom, 
but  of  folly."  But  even  at  Oxford  the  contest  was  soon  at 
an  end.  Fox,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  established  the  first 
Greek  lecture  there  in  his  new  college  of  Corpus  Christi, 
and  a  Professorship  of  Greek  was  at  a  later  time  established 
by  the  Crown.  "  The  students,"  wrote  an  eye-witness, 
"  rush  to  Greek  letters,  they  endure  watching,  fasting,  toil, 
and  hunger  in  the  pursuit  of  them."  The  work  was  crowned 
at  last  by  the  munificent  foundation  of  Cardinal  College,  to 
share  in  whose  teaching  Wolsey  invited  the  most  eminent  of 
the  living  scholars  of  Europe,  and  for  whose  library  he  prom- 
ised to  obtain  copies  of  all  the  manuscripts  in  the  Vatican. 
From  the  reform  of  education  the  New  Learning  pressed 
on  to  the  reform  of  the  Church.  Warham  still  flung  around 
the  movement  his  steady  protection,  and  it  was  The  New 
by  his  commission  that  Colet  was  enabled  to  ad-  Learningand 
dress  the  Convocation  of  the  Clergy  in  words  the  CLurch. 
which  set  before  them  with  unsparing  severity  the  religious 
ideal  of  the  New  Learning.  "  Would  that  for  once,"  burst 
forth  the  fiery  preacher,  "you  would  remember  your  name 
and  profession  and  take  thought  for  the  reformation  of  the 
Church  !  Never  was  it  more  necessary,  and  never  did  the 
state  of  the  Church  need  more  vigorous  endeavors."  "We 
are  troubled  with  heretics,"  he  went  on,  "but  no  heresy  of 
theirs  is  so  fatal  to  us  and  to  the  people  at  large  as  the  vicious 
and  depraved  lives  of  the  clergy.  That  is  the  worst  heresy 


394  HISTOEY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  all."  It  was  the  reform  of  the  bishops  that  must  precede 
that  of  the  clergy,  the  reform  of  the  clergy  that  would  lead 
to  a  general  revival  of  religion  in  the  people  at  large.  The 
accumulation  of  benefices,  the  luxury  and  worldliness  of  the 
priesthood,  must  be  abandoned.  The  prelates  ought  to  be 
busy  preachers,  to  forsake  the  Court  and  labor  in  their  own 
diooeses.  Care  should  be  taken  for  the  ordination  and  pro- 
motion of  worthier  ministers,  residence  should  be  enforced, 
the  low  standard  of  clerical  morality  should  be  raised.  It  is 
plain  that  the  men  of  the  New  Learning  looked  forward,  not 
to  a  reform  of  doctrine,  but  to  a  reform  of  life,  not  to  a  revolu- 
tion which  should  sweep  away  the  older  superstitions  which 
they  despised,  but  to  a  regeneration  of  spiritual  feeling  be- 
fore which  they  would  inevitably  vanish.  Colet  was  soon 
charged  with  heresy  by  the  Bishop  of  London.  Warham, 
however  protected  him,  and  Henry,  to  whom  the  Dean  was 
denounced,  bade  him  go  boldly  on.  "  Let  every  man  have 
his  own  doctor/'  said  the  young  king,  after  a  long  inter- 
view, "  and  let  every  man  favor  his  own,  but  this  man  is  the 
doctor  for  me." 

But  for  the  success  of  the  new  reform,  a  reform  which 
could  only  be  wrought  out  by  the  tranquil  spread  of  knowl- 
edge and  the  gradual  enlightenment  of  the  human 
conscience,  the  one  thing  needful  was  peace  ;  and 
the  young  king  to  whom  the  scholar-group  looked 
was  already  longing  for  war.  Long  as  peace  had  been 
established  between  tho  two  countries,  the  designs  of  England 
upon  the  French  crown  had  never  been  really  waived,  and 
Henry's  pride  dwelt  on  the  oMer  claims  of  England  to  Nor- 
rnandy  and  Guienne.  Edward  the  Fourth  and  Henry  the 
Seventh  had  each  clung  to  a  system  of  peace,  only  broken 
by  the  vain  efforts  to  save  Britanny  from  French  invasion. 
But  the  growth  of  the  French  monarchy  in  extent  and  power 
through  the  policy  of  Lewis  the  Eleventh,  his  extinction  of 
the  great  feudatories,  and  the  administrative  centralization 
he  introduced,  raised  his  kingdom  to  a  height  far  above  that 
of  its  European  rivals.  The  power  of  France,  in  fact,  was 
only  counterbalanced  by  that  of  Spain,  which  had  become  a 
great  state  through  the  union  of  Castile  and  Aragon,  and 
where  the  cool  and  wary  Ferdinand  of  Aragon  was  building 
up  a  vast  power  by  the  marriage  of  his  daughter  and  heiress 


THE  NEW   LEARNING.      1509  TO  1520.  396 

to  the  Archduke  Philip,  son  of  the  Emperor  Maximilian. 
Too  weak  to  meet  France  single-handed,  Henry  the  Seventh, 
saw  in  an  alliance  with  Spain  a  security  against  his  "heredi- 
tary enemy,"  and  this  alliance  had  been  cemented  by  the 
marriage  of  his  eldest  son,  Arthur,  with  Ferdinand's  daugh- 
ter, Catharine  of  Aragon.  This  match  was  broken  by  the 
death  of  the  young  bridegroom  ;  but  by  the  efforts  of  Spain 
a  Papal  dispensation  was  procured  which  enabled  Catharine 
to  wed  the  brother  of  her"  late  husband.  Henry,  however, 
anxious  to  preserve  a  balanced  position  between  the  battling 
powers  of  France  and  Spain,  opposed  the  union  ;  but  Henry 
the  Eighth  had  no  sooner  succeeded  his  father  on  the  throne 
than  the  marriage  was  carried  out.  Throughout  the  first 
year  of  his  reign,  amidst  the  tournaments  and  revelry  which 
seemed  to  absorb  his  whole  energies,  Henry  \vas  in  fact 
keenly  watching  the  opening  which  the  ambition  of  France 
began  to  afford  for  a  renewal  of  the  old  struggle.  Under  the 
successors  of  Lewis  the  Eleventh  the  efforts  of  the  French 
monarchy  had  been  directed  to  the  conquest  of  Italy.  The 
passage  of  the  Alps  by  Charles  the  Eighth  and  the  mastery 
which  he  won  over  Italy  at  a  single  blow  lifted  France  at 
once  above  the  states  around  her.  Twice  repulsed  from 
Naples,  she  remained  under  the  successor  of  Charles,  Lewis 
the  Twelfth,  mistress  of  Milan  and  of  the  bulk  of  Northern 
Italy  ;  and  the  ruin  of  Venice  in  the  league  of  Cambray 
crushed  the  last  Italian  state  which  could  oppose  her  designs 
on  the  whole  peninsula.  A  Holy  League,  as  it  was  called 
from  the  accession  to  it  of  the  Pope,  to  drive  France  from 
the  Milanese  was  formed  by  the  efforts  of  Ferdinand,  aided 
as  he  was  by  the  kinship  of  the  Emperor,  the  support  of 
Venice  and  Julius  the  Second,  and  the  warlike  temper  of 
Henry  the  Eighth.  "The  barbarians/'  to  use  the  phrase  of 
Julius,  "were  chased  beyond  the  Alps;"  but  Ferdinand's 
unscrupulous  adroitness  only  used  the  English  force,  which 
had  landed  at  Fontarabia  with  the  view  of  attacking  Guienne, 
to  cover  his  own  conquest  of  Navarre.  The  troops  mutinied 
and  sailed  home  ;  men  scoffed  at  the  English  as  useless  for 
war.  Henry's  spirit,  however,  rose  with  the  need.  He 
landed  in  person  in  the  north  of  France,  rnd  a  sudden  rout  of 
the  French  cavalry  in  an  engagement  near  Guinegate,  which 
received  from  its  bloodless  character  the  name  of  the  battle 


396  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  the  Spurs,  gave  him  the  fortresses  of  Terouanne  and  Tour- 
nay.  The  young  conqueror  was  eagerly  pressing  on  to  the 
recovery  of  his  "heritage  of  France/'  when  he  found  him- 
self suddenly  left  alone  by  the  desertion  of  Ferdinand  and 
the  dissolution  of  the  league.  Henry  had  indeed  gained 
much.  The  might  of  France  was  broken.  The  Papacy  was 
restored  to  freedom.  England  had  again  figured  as  a  great 
power  in  Europe.  But  the  millions  left  by  his  father  were 
exhausted,  his  subjects  had  been'  drained  by  repeated  sub- 
sidies, and,  furious  as  he  was  at  the  treachery  of  his  Spanish 
ally,  Henry  was  driven  to  conclude  a  peace. 

To  the  hopes  of  the  New  Learning  this  sudden  outbreak 
of  the  spirit  of  war,  this  change  of  the  monarch  from  whom 

The  Peace  they  na^  looked  for  a  "new  order"  into  a  vulgar 
andtoeNew  conqueror,  proved  a  bitter  disappointment.  Colet 

Learning,  thundered  from  the  pulpit  cf  St.  Paul's  that  "  an 
unjust  peace  is  better  than  the  justest  war,"  and  protested 
that  "  when  men  out  of  hatred  and  ambition  fight  with  and 
destroy  one  another,  they  fight  under  the  banner,  not  of 
Christ,  but  of  the  Devil."  Erasmus  quitted  Cambridge  with 
a  bitter  satire  against  the  "madness"  around  him.  "It 
is  the  people,"  he  said,  in  words  which  must  have  startled 
his  age, — "  it  is  the  people  who  build  cities,  while  the  mad- 
ness of  princes  destroys  them."  The  sovereigns  of  his  time 
appeared  to  him  like  ravenous  birds  pouncing  with  beak  and 
claw  on  the  hard-won  wealth  and  knowledge  of  mankind. 
"Kings  who  are  scarcely  men,"  he  exclaimed  in  bitter  irony, 
"  are  called  *  divine  ; '  they  are  '  invincible '  though  they  fly 
from  every  battle-field  ;  'serene'  though  they  turn  the  world 
upside  down  in  a  storm  of  war  ;  '  illustrious '  though  they 
grovel  in  ignorance  of  all  that  is  noble  ;  'Catholic'  though 
they  follow  anything  rather  than  Christ.  Of  all  birds  the 
Eagle  alone  has  seemed  to  wise  men  the  type  of  royalty,  a 
bird  neither  beautiful  nor  musical  nor  good  for  food,  but 
murderous,  greedy,  hateful  to  all,  the  curse  of  all,  and  with 
its  great  powers  of  doing  harm  only  surpassed  by  its  desire 
to  do  it."  It  was  the  first  time  in  modern  history  that  religion 
had  formally  dissociated  itself  from  the  ambition  of  princes 
and  the  horrors  of  war,  or  that  the  new  spirit  of  criticism 
had  ventured  not  only  to  question  but  to  deny  what  had  till 
then  seemed  the  primary  truths  of  political  order.  We  shall 


THE   NEW   LEARNING.      1509   TO   1520.  397 

soon  see  to  what  further  length  the  new  speculations  were 
pushed  by  a  greater  thinker,  but  for  the  moment  the  indig- 
nation of 'the  New  Learning  was  diverted  to  more  practical 
ends  by  the  sudden  peace.  However  he  had  disappointed  its 
hopes,  Henry  still  remained  its  friend.  Through  all  the 
changes  of  his  terrible  career  his  home  was  a  home  of  letters. 
His  boy,  Edward  the  Sixth,  was  a  fair  scholar  in  both  the 
classical  languages.  His  daughter  Mary  wrote  good  Latin 
letters.  Elizabeth  began  every  day  with  an  hour's  reading 
in  the  Greek  Testament,  the  tragedies  of  Sophocles,  or  the 
orations  of  Demosthenes.  The  ladies  of  the  court  caught  the 
royal  fashion,  and  were  found  poring  over  the  pages  of  Plato. 
Widely  as  Henry's  ministers  differed  from  each  other,  they 
all  agreed  in  sharing  and  fostering  the  culture  around  them. 
The  panic  of  the  scholar-group  therefore  soon  passed  away. 
The  election  of  Leo  the  Tenth,  the  fellow-student  of  Li  nacre, 
the  friend  of  Erasmus,  seemed  to  give  to  the  New  Learning 
control  of  Christendom.  The  age  of  the  turbulent,  ambitious 
Julius  was  thought  to  be  over,  and  the  new  Pope  declared 
for  a  universal  peace.  "  Leo,"  wrote  an  English  agent  at 
his  Court,  in  words  to  which  after-history  lent  a  strange 
meaning,  "  would  favor  literature  and  the  arts,  busy  himself 
in  building,  and  enter  into  no  war  save  through  actual  com- 
pulsion." England,  under  the  new  ministry  of  Wolsey,  with- 
drew from  any  active  interference  in  the  struggles  of  the 
Continent,  and  seemed  as  resolute  as  Leo  himself  for  peace. 
Colet  toiled  on  with  his  educational  efforts  ;  Erasmus  for- 
warded to  England  the  works  which  English  liberality  was 
enabling  him  to  produce  abroad.  Warham  extended  to  him 
as  generous  an  aid  us  the  protection  he  had  afforded  to  Colet. 
His  edition  of  the  works  of  St.  Jerome  had  been  begun  under 
Warham's  encouragement  during  the  great  scholar's  residence 
at  Cambridge,  and  it  appeared  with  a  dedication  to  the  Arch- 
bishop on  its  title-page.  That  Erasmus  could  find  protection 
in  Warham's  name  for  a  work  which  boldly  recalled  Chris- 
tendom to  the  path  of  sound  Biblical  criticism,  that  he  could 
address  him  in  words  so  outspoken  as  those  of  his  preface, 
shows  how  fully  the  Primate  sympathized  with  the  highest 
efforts  of  the  New  Learning.  Nowhere  had  the  spirit  of  in- 
quiry so  firmly  set  itself  against  the  claims  of  authority. 
"Synods  and  decrees,  and  even  councils,"  wrote  Erasmus, 


398  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

"  are  by  no  means  in  my  judgment  the  fittest  modes  of  re- 
pressing error,  unless  truth  depend  simply  on  authority. 
But  on  the  contrary,  the  more  dogmas  there  are,  the  more 
fruitful  is  the  ground  in  producing  heresies.  Never  was  the 
Christian  faith  purer  or  more  undefiled  than  when  the  world 
was  content  with  a  single  creed,  and  that  the  shortest  creed 
we  have."  It  is  touching  even  now  to  listen  to  such  an  ap- 
peal of  reason  and  of  culture  against  the  tide  of  dogmatism 
which  was  soon  to  flood  Christendom  with  Augsburg  Confes- 
sions and  Creeds  of  Pope  Pius  and  Westminster  Catechisms 
and  Thirty-nine  Articles.  The  principles  which  Erasmus 
urged  in  his  "  Jerome  "  were  urged  with  far  greater  clear- 
ness and  force  in  a  work  which  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
future  Reformation,  the  edition  of  the  Greek  Testament  on 
which  he  had  been  engaged  at  Cambridge,  and  whose  pro- 
duction was  almost  wholly  due  to  the  encouragement  and 
assistance  he  received  from  English  scholars.  In  itself  the 
book  was  a  bold  defiance  of  theological  tradition.  It  set  aside 
the  Latin  version  of  the  Vulgate,  which  had  secured  uni- 
versal acceptance  in  the  Church.  Its  method  of  interpreta- 
tion was  based,  not  on  received  dogmas,  but  on  the  literal 
meaning  of  the  text.  Its  real  end  was  the  end  at  which  Colet 
had  aimed  in  his  Oxford  lectures.  Erasmus  desired  to  set 
Christ  himself  in  the  place  of  the  Church,  to  recall  men  from 
the  teachings  of  Christian  theologians  to  the  teachings  of  the 
Founder  of  Christianity.  The  whole  value  of  the  Gospels  to 
him  lay  in  the  vividness  with  which  they  brought  home 
to  their  readers  the  personal  impression  of  Christ  himself. 
"  Were  we  to  have  seen  him  with  our  own  eyes,  we  should 
not  have  so  intimate  a  knowledge  as  they  give  us  of  Christ, 
speaking,  healing,  dying,  rising  again,  as  it  were  in  our  very 
presence. "  All  the  superstitions  of  medieval  worship  faded 
away  in  the  light  of  this  personal  worship  of  Christ.  "  If 
the  footprints  of  Christ  are  shown  us  in  any  place,  we  kneel 
down  and  adore  them.  Why  do  we  not  rather  venerate  the 
living  and  breathing  picture  of  him  in  these  books  ?  We 
deck  statues  of  wood  and  stone  with  gold  and  gems  for  the 
love  of  Christ.  Yet  they  only  profess  to  represent  to  us  the 
outer  form  of  his  body,  while  these  books  present  us  with  a 
living  picture  of  his  holy  mind."  In  the  same  way  the  actual 
teaching  of  Christ  was  made  to  supersede  the  mvsterioua 


THE   NEW   LEARNING.      1509  TO   1520.  899 

dogmas  of  the  older  ecclesiastical  teaching.  "  As  though 
Christ  taught  such  subtleties,"  burst  out  Erasmus  :  "subtle- 
ties that  can  scarcely  be  understood  even  by  a  few  theologians 
— or  as  though  the  strength  of  the  Christian  religion  con- 
sisted in  man's  ignorance  of  it  !  It  may  be  the  safer  course," 
he  goes  on,  with  characteristic  irony,  "  to  conceal  the  state- 
mysteries  of  kings,  but  Christ  desired  his  mysteries  to  be 
spread  abroad  as  openly  as  wus  possible."  In  the  diffusion, 
in  the  universal  knowledge  of  the  teaching  of  Christ  the 
foundation  of  a  reformed  Christianity  had  still,  he  urged,  to 
be  laid.  With  the  tacit  approval  of  the  Primate  of  a  Church 
which  from  the  time  of  Wyclif  had  held  the  translation  and 
reading  of  the  Bible  in  the  common  tongue  to  be  heresy  and 
a  crime  punishable  with  the  fire,  Erasmus  boldly  avowed  his 
wish  for  a  Bible  open  and  intelligible  to  all.  "  I  wish  that 
even  the  weakest  woman  might  read  the  Gospels  and  the 
Epistles  of  St.  Paul.  I  wish  that  they  were  translated  into 
all  languages,  so  as  to  be  read  and  understood  not  only  by 
Scots  and  Irishmen,  but  even  by  Saracens  and  Turks.  But 
the  first  step  to  their  being  read  is  to  make  them  intelligible 
to  the  reader.  I  long  for  the  day  when  the  husbandman 
shall  sing  portions  of  them  to  himself  as  he  follows  the 
plow,  when  the  weaver  shall  hum  them  to  the  tune  of  his 
shuttle,  when  the  traveler  shall  while  away  with  their  stories 
the  weariness  of  his  journey."  The  New  Testament  of  Eras- 
mus became  the  topic  of  the  day  ;  the  Court,  the  Univer- 
sities, every  household  to  which  the  New  Learning  had 
penetrated,  read  and  discussed  it.  But  bold  as  its  language 
may  have  seemed,  Warham  not  only  expressed  his  approba- 
tion, but  lent  the  work — as  he  wrote  to  its  author — "to 
bishop  after  bishop."  The  most  influential  of  his  suffragans, 
Bishop  Fox  of  Winchester,  declared  that  the  mere  version 
was  worth  ten  commentaries  ;  one  of  the  most  learned,  Fisher 
of  Rochester,  entertained  Erasmus  at  his  house. 

Daring  and  full  of  promise  as  were  these  efforts  of  the  New 
Learning  in  the  direction  of  educational  and  religious  reform, 
its  political  and  social  speculations  took  a  far 
wider  range  in  the  "  Utopia  "  of  Thomas  More. 
Even  in  the  household  of  Cardinal  Morton,  where 
he  had  spent  his  childhood,  More's  precocious  ability  had 
raised  the  highest  hopes.  "  Whoever  may  live  to  see  it,"  the 


400  HISTORY  OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

gray-haired  statesman  used  to  say,  "  this  boy  now  wailing  at 
table  will  turn  out  a  marvelous  man."  We  have  seen  the 
spell  which  his  wonderful  learning  and  the  sweetness  of  his 
temper  threw  over  Colet  and  Erasmus  at  Oxford,  and  young 
as  he  was,  More  no  sooner  quitted  the  University  than  he 
was  known  throughout  Europe  as  one  of  the  foremost  figures 
in  the  new  movement.  The  keen,  irregular  face,  the  gray 
restless  eye,  the  thin  mobile  lips,  the  tumbled  brown  hair, 
the  careless  gait  and  dress,  as  they  remain  stamped  on  the 
canvas  of  Holbein,  picture  the  inner  soul  of  the  man,  his 
vivacity,  his  restless,  all-devouring  intellect,  his  keen  and  even 
reckless  wit,  the  kindly,  half-sad  humor  that  drew  its  strange 
veil  of  laughter  and  tears  over  the  deep,  tender  reverence  of 
the  soul  within.  In  a  higher,  because  in  a  sweeter  and  more 
loveable  form  than  Colet,  More  is  the  representative  of  the 
religious  tendency  of  the  New  Learning  in  England.  The 
young  law-student  who  laughed  at  the  superstition  and 
asceticism  of  the  monks  of  his  day  wore  a  hair  shirt  next  his 
skin,  and  schooled  himself  by  penances  for  the  cell  he  desired 
among  the  Carthusians.  It  was  characteristic  of  the  man 
that  among  all  the  gay,  profligate  scholars  of  the  Italian 
Renascence  he  chose  as  the  object  of  his  admiration  the 
disciple  of  Savonarola,  Pico  di  Mirandola.  Free-thinker  as 
the  bigots  who  listened  to  his  daring  speculations  termed 
him,  his  eye  would  brighten  and  his  tongtve  falter  as  he  spoke 
with  friends  of  heaven  and  the  after-life.  When  he  took 
office,  it  was  with  the  open  stipulation  "first to  look  to  God, 
and  after  God  to  the  king."  But  in  his  outer  bearing  there 
was  nothing  of  the  monk  or  recluse.  The  brightness  and 
freedom  of  the  New  Learning  seemed  incarnate  in  the  young 
scholar,  with  his  gay  talk,  his  winsomeness  of  manner,  hia 
reckless  epigrams,  his  passionate  love  of  music,  his  omnivor- 
ous reading,  his  paradoxical  speculations,  his  gibes  at  monks, 
his  schoolboy  fervor  of  liberty.  But  events  were  soon  to 
prove  that  beneath  this  sunny  nature  lay  a  stern  inflexibility 
of  conscientious  resolve.  The  Florentine  scholars  who  penned 
declamations  against  tyrants  had  covered  with  their  flatteries 
the  tyranny  of  the  house  of  Medici.  More  no  sooner  entered 
Parliament  than  his  ready  argument  and  keen  sense  of  justice 
led  to  the  rejection  of  the  Royal  demand  for  a  heavy  subsidy. 
"  A  beardless  boy,"  said  the  courtiers, — and  More  was  only 


THE  NEW   LEARNING.      1509   TO   1520.  401 

twenty-six, — "has  disappointed  the  king's  purpose;"  and 
during  the  rest  of  Henry  the  Seventh's  reign  the  young 
lawyer  found  it  prudent  to  withdraw  from  public  life.  But 
the  withdrawal  had  little  effect  on  his  buoyant  activity.  He 
rose  at  once  into  repute  at  the  bar.  He  wrote  his  "  Life  of 
Edward  the  Fifth,"  the  first  work  in  which  what  we  may  call 
modern  English  prose  appears  written  with  purity  and  clear- 
ness of  style  and  a  freedom  either  from  antiquated  forms  of 
expression  or  classical  pedantry.  His  ascetic  dreams  were 
replaced  by  the  affections  of  home.  It  is  when  we  get  a 
glimpse  of  him  in  his  house  at  Chelsea  that  we  understand 
the  endearing  epithets  which  Erasmus  always  lavishes  upon 
More.  The  delight  of  the  young  husband  was  to  train  the 
girl  ne  had  chosen  for  his  wife  in  his  own  taste  for  letters  and 
for  music.  The  reserve  which  the  age  exacted  from  parents 
was  thrown  to  the  winds  in  More's  intercourse  with  his 
children.  He  loved  teaching  them,  and  lured  them  to  their 
deeper  studies  by  the  coins  and  curiosities  he  had  gathered 
in  his  cabinet.  He  was  as  fond  of  their  pets  and  their  games 
as  his  children  themselves,  and  would  take  grave  scholars  and 
statesmen  into  the  garden  to  see  his  girls'  rabbit-hutches  or 
to  watch  the  gambols  of  their  favorite  monkey.  "  I  have 
given  you  kisses  enough,"  he  wrote  to  his  little  ones  in  merry 
verse  when  far  away  on  political  business,  "  but  stripes  hardly 
ever."  The  accession  of  Henry  the  Eighth  dragged  him  back 
into  the  political  current.  It  was  at  his  house  that  Erasmus 
penned  the  "  Praise  of  Folly,"  and  the  work,  in  its  Latin 
title,  "  Moriae  Encomium,"  embodied  in  playful  fun  his  love 
of  the  extravagant  humor  of  More.  More  "tried  as  hard  to 
keep  out  of  Court,"  says  his  descendant,  "as  most  men  try 
feo  get  into  it."  When  the  charm  of  his  conversation  gave  so 
much  pleasure  to  the  young  sovereign,  "  that  he  could  not 
once  in  a  month  get  leave  to  go  home  to  his  wife  or  children, 
whose  company  he  much  desired,  ...  he  began  thereupon 
to  dissemble  his  nature,  and  so,  little  by  little,  from  his 
former  mirth  to  dissemble  himself."  More  shared  to  the 
full  the  disappointment  of  his  friends  at  the  sudden  outbreak 
of  Henry's  warlike  temper,  but  the  peace  again  drew  him  to 
Henry's  side,  and  he  was  soon  in  the  king's  confidence  both 
as  a  counselor  and  as  a  dinlomatist. 

It  was  on  one  of  his  diplomatic  missions  that  More  describes 


402  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

himself  as  hearing  news  of  the  Kingdom  of  "Nowhere.* 
"  On  a  certain  day  when  I  had  heard  mass  in  Our  Lady's 

Church,  which  is  the  fairest,  the  most  gorgeous 
Utopia.  anc*  curi°us  church  of  building  in  all  the  city  of 

Antwerp,  and  also  most  frequented  of  people,  and 
service  being  over  I  was  ready  to  go  home  to  my  lodgings,  I 
chanced  to  espy  my  friend  Peter  Gilles  talking  with  a  certain 
stranger,  a  man  well  stricken  in  age,  with  a  black  sunburnt 
face,  a  large  beard,  and  a  cloke  cast  trimly  about  his  shoulders, 
whom  by  his  favor  and  apparell  forthwith  I  judged  to  be  a 
mariner."  The  sailor  turned  out  to  have  been  a  companion 
of  Amerigo  Vespucci  in  those  voyages  to  the  New  World 
"  that  be  now  in  print  and  abroad  in  every  man's  hand, "and 
on  More's  invitation  he  accompanied  him  to  his  house,  and 
"  there  in  my  garden  upon  a  bench  covered  with  green 
turves  we  sate  down,  talking  together  "of  the  man's  marvel- 
ous adventures,  his  desertion  in  America  by  Vespucci,  his 
wanderings  over  the  country  under  the  equinoctial  line,  and 
at  last  of  his  stay  in  the  Kingdom  of  "  Nowhere."  It  was 
the  story  of  "Nowhere,"  or  Utopia,  which  More  embodied 
in  the  wonderful  book  which  reveals  to  us  the  heart  of  the 
New  Learning.  As  yet  the  movement  had  been  one  of 
scholars  and  divines.  Its  plans  of  reform  had  been  almost 
exclusively  intellectual  and  religious.  But  in  More  the  same 
free  play  of  thought  which  had  shaken  off  the  old  forms  of 
education  and  faith  turned  to  question  the  old  forms  of  society 
and  politics.  From  a  world  where  fifteen  hundred  years  of 
Christian  teaching  had  produced  social  injustice,  religious 
intolerance,  and  political  tyranny,  the  humorist  philosopher 
turned  to  a  "Nowhere  "  in  which  the  mere  efforts  of  natural 
human  virtue  realized  those  ends  of  security,  equality,  brother, 
hood,  and  freedom  for  which  the  very  institution  of  society 
seemed  to  have  been  framed.  It  is  as  he  wanders  through 
this  dreamland  of  the  new  reason  that  More  touches  the 
great  problems  which  were  fast  opening  before  the  modern 
world,  problems  of  labor,  of  crime,  of  conscience,  of  govern- 
ment. Merely  to  have  seen  and  to  have  examined  questions 
such  as  these  would  prove  the  keenness  of  his  intellect,  but 
its  far-reaching  originality  is  shown  in  the  solutions  which  he 
proposes.  Amidstmuch  that  is  the  pare  play  of  an  exuberant 
fancy,  much  that  is  mere  recollection  of  the  dreams  of  bygone 


THE   NEW   LEARNING.      1509   TO   1520.  403 

dreamers,  we  find  again  and  again  the  most  important  social 
and  political  discoveries  of  later  times  anticipated  by  the 
genius  of  Thomas  More.  In  some  points,  such  as  his  treat- 
ment of  the  question  of  Labor,  he  still  remains  far  in  advance 
of  current  opinion.  The  whole  system  of  society  around  him 
seemed  to  him  "nothing  but  a  conspiracy  of  the  rich  against 
the  poor."  Its  economic  legislation  was  simply  the  carrying 
out  of  such  a  conspiracy  by  process  of  law.  "  The  rich  are 
ever  striving  to  pure  away  something  further  from  the  daily 
wages  of  the  poor  by  private  fraud  and  even  by  public  law,  so 
that  the  wrong  already  existing  (for  it  is  a  wrong  that  those 
from  whom  the  State  derives  most  benefit  should  receive 
least  reward)  is  made  yet  greater  by  means  of  the  law  of  the 
State."  "  The  rich  devise  every  means  by  which  they  may 
in  the  first  place  secure  to  themselves  what  they  have  amassed 
by  wrong,  and  then  take  to  their  own  use  and  profit  at  the 
lowest  possible  price  the  work  and  labor  of  the  poor.  And 
so  soon  as  the  rich  decide  on  adopting  these  devices  in  the 
name  of  the  public,  then  they  become  law."  The  result  was 
the  wretched  existence  to  which  the  labor-class  was  doomed, 
"a  life  so  wretched  that  even  a  beast's  life  seems  enviable." 
No  such  cry  of  pity  for  the  poor,  of  protest  against  the 
system  of  agrarian  and  manufacturing  tyranny  which  found 
its  expression  in  the  Statute-book,  had  been  heard  since  the 
days  of  Piers  Plowman.  But  from  Christendom  More  turns 
with  a  smite  to  "Nowhere."  In  "Nowhere"  the  aim  of 
legislation  is  to  secure  the  welfare,  social,  industrial,  intel- 
lectual, religious,  of  the  community  at  large,  and  of  the 
labor-class  as  the  true  basis  of  a  well-ordered  commonwealth. 
The  end  of  its  labor-laws  was  simply  the  welfare  of  the 
laborer.  Goods  were  possessed  indeed  in  common,  but  work 
was  compulsory  with  all.  The  period  of  toil  was  shortened 
to  the  nine  hours  demanded  by  modern  artisans,  with  a  view 
to  the  intellectual  improvement  of  the  worker.  "  In  the  in- 
stitution of  the  weal  public  this  end  is  only  and  chiefly  pre- 
tended and  minded  that  what  time  may  possibly  be  spared 
from  the  necessary  occupations  and  affairs  of  the  common- 
wealth, all  that  the  citizens  should  withdraw  from  bodily 
service  to  the  free  liberty  of  the  mind  and  garnishing  of  the 
same.  For  herein  they  conceive  the  felicity  of  this  life  to 
consist."  A  public  system  of  education  enabled  the  Utop- 


404  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ians  to  avail  themselves  of  their  leisure.  "While  in  England 
half  of  the  population  could  read  no  English,  every  child  was 
well  taught  in  "  Nowhere."  The  physical  aspects  of  society 
were  cared  for  as  attentively  as  its  moral.  The  houses  of 
Utopia  "  in  the  beginning  were  very  low  and  like  homely 
cottages  or  poor  shepherd  huts  made  at  all  adventures  of 
every  rude  piece  of  timber  that  came  first  to  hand,  with  mud 
walls  and  ridged  roofs  thatched  over  with  straw."  The 
picture  was  really  that  of  the  common  English  town  of  More's 
day,  the  home  of  squalor  and  pestilence.  In  Utopia  however 
they  had  at  last  come  to  realize  the  connection  between  public 
morality  and  the  health  which  springs  from  light,  air,  com- 
fort, and  cleanliness.  "  The  streets  were  twenty  feet  broad  ; 
the  houses  backed  by  spacious  gardens,  and  curiously  builded 
after  a  gorgeous  and  gallant  sort,  with  their  stories  one  after 
another.  The  outsides  of  the  walls  be  made  either  of  hard 
flint,  or  of  plaster,  or  else  of  brick  ;  and  the  inner  sides  be 
well  strengthened  by  timber  work.  The  roofs  be  plain  and 
flat,  covered  over  with  plaster  so  tempered  that  no  fire  can 
hurt  or  perish  it,  and  withstanding  the  violence  of  the 
weather  better  than  any  lead.  They  keep  the  wind  out  of 
their  windows  with  glass,  for  it  is  there  much  used,  and 
sometimes  also  with  fine  linen  cloth  dipped  in  oil  or  amber, 
and  that  for  two  commodities,  for  by  this  means  more  light 
cometh  in  and  the  wind  is  better  kept  out." 

The  same  foresight  which  appears  in  More's  treatment  of 
the  questions  of  Labor  and  the  Public  Health  is  yet  more 
apparent  in  his  treatment  of  the  question  of  Crime.  He  was 
the  first  to  suggest  that  punishment  was  less  effective  in  sup- 
pressing it  than  prevention.  "  If  you  allow  your  people  to  be 
badly  taught,  their  morals  to  be  corrupted  from  childhood, 
and  then  when  they  are  men  punish  them  for  the  very  crimes 
to  which  they  have  been  trained  in  childhood — what  is  this 
but  to  make  thieves,  and  then  to  punish  them  ?"  He  was 
the  first  to  plead  for  proportion  between  the  punishment 
and  the  crime,  and  to  point  out  the  folly  of  the  cruel  pen- 
alties of  his  day.  "  Simple  theft  is  not  so  great  an  offense  as 
to  be  punished  with  death."  If  a  thief  and  a  murderer  are  sure 
of  the  same  penalty,  More  shows  that  the  law  is  simply  tempt- 
ing the  thief  to  secure  his  theft  by  murder.  "  While  we  go 
about  to  make  thieves  afraid,  we  are  really  provoking  them  to 


THE   NEW   LEARNING.      1509   TO   1520.  405 

kill  good  men."  The  end  of  all  punishment  he  declares  to  be 
reformation,  "  nothing  else  but  the  destruction  of  vice  and  the 
saving  of  men."  He  advises  "  so  using  and  ordering  criminals 
that  they  cannot  choose  but  be  good  ;  and  what  harm  soever 
they  did  before,  the  residue  of  their  lives  to  make  amends  for 
the  same."  Above  all,  he  urges  that  to  be  remedial  punish- 
ment must  be  wrought  out  by  labor  and  hope,  so  that  "  none 
is  hopeless  or  in  despair  to  recover  again  his  former  state  of 
freedom  by  giving  good  tokens  and  likelihood  of  himself 
that  he  will  ever  after  that  live  a  true  and  honest  man." 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  in  the  great  principles  More 
lays  down  he  anticipated  every  one  of  the  improvements 
in  our  criminal  system  which  have  distinguished  the  last 
hundred  years.  His  treatment  of  the  religious  question  was 
even  more  in  advance  of  his  age.  If  the  houses  of  Utopia 
were  strangely  in  contrast  with  the  halls  of  England,  where 
the  bones  from  every  dinner  lay  rotting  in  the  dirty  straw 
which  strewed  the  floor,  where  the  smoke  curled  about  the 
rafters,  and  the  wind  whistled  through  the  unglazed  windows  ; 
if  its  penal  legislation  had  little  likeness  to  the  gallows  which 
stood  out  so  frequently  against  our  English  sky  ;  the  religion 
of  "  Nowhere"  was  in  yet  stronger  conflict  with  the  faith  of 
Christendom.  It  rested  simply  on  nature  and  reason.  It 
held  that  God's  design  was  the  happiness  of  man,  and  that  the 
ascetic  rejection  of  human  delights,  save  for  the  common 
good,  was  thanklessness  to  the  Giver.  Christianity,  indeed, 
had  already  reached  Utopia,  but  it  had  few  priests  ;  religion 
found  its  center  rather  in  the  family  than  in  the  congrega- 
tion :  and  each  household  confessed  its  faults  to  its  own 
natural  head.  A  yet  stranger  characteristic  was  seen  in  the 
peaceable  way  in  which  it  lived  side  by  side  with  the  older 
religions.  More  than  a  century  before  William  of  Orange, 
More  discerned  and  proclaimed  the  great  principle  of  religious 
toleration.  In  "  Nowhere"  it  was  lawful  to  every  man  to  be 
of  what  religion  he  would.  Even  the  disbelievers  in  a  Divine 
Being  or  in  the  immortality  of  man,  who  by  a  single  excep- 
tion to  its  perfect  religious  indifference  were  excluded  from 
public  office,  were  excluded,  not  on  the  ground  of  their  re- 
ligious belief,  but  because  their  opinions  were  deemed  to  be 
degrading  to  mankind,  and  therefore  to  incapacitate  those 
who  held  them  from  governing  in  a  noble  temper.  But  even 


406  HISTORY   OP   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

these  were  subject  to  no  punishment,  because  the  people  of 
Utopia  were  "  persuaded  that  it  is  not  in  a  man's  power  to 
believe  what  he  list."  The  religion  which  a  man  held  he 
might  propagate  by  argument,  though  not  by  violence  or 
insult  to  the  religion  of  others.  But  while  each  sect  per- 
formed its  rites  in  private,  all  assembled  for  public  worship 
in  a  spacious  temple,  where  the  vast  throng,  clad  in  white, 
and  grouped  round  a  priest  clothed  in  fair  raiment  wrought 
marvelously  out  of  birds'  plumage,  joined  in  hymns  and 
prayers  so  framed  as  to  be  acceptable  to  all.  The  importance 
of  t"his  public  devotion  lay  in  the  evidence  it  afforded  that 
liberty  of  conscience  could  be  combined  with  religious  unity. 


.  Section  V.—Wolsey.    1515—1531. 

[Autlwrities.— The  chronicler  Halle,  who  wrote  under  Edward  the  Sixth,  has 
been  copied  for  Henry  the  Eighth's  reign  by  Grafton,  and  followed  by  Holinshed. 
But  for  any  real  knowledge  of  Wolsey's  administration  we  must  turn  to  the  in- 
valuable prefaces  which  Professor  Brewer  has  prefixed  to  the  Calendars  of  State 
Papers  for  this  period,  and  to  the  State  Papers  themselves.] 

"  There  are  many  things  in  the  commonwealth  of  Nowhere, 
which  I  rather  wish  than  hope  to  see  adopted  in  our  own." 
The  New  ^  was  w^n  these  words  of  characteristic  irony 
Learning  that  More  closed  the  first  work  which  embodied 
and  the  the  dreams  of  the  New  Learning.  Destined  as  they 

T?  of  Arm  d+iftn 

'  were  to  fulfilment  in  the  course  of  ages,  its  schemes 
of  social,  religious,  and  political  reform  broke  helplessly 
against  the  temper  of  the  time.  At  the  very  moment  when 
More  was  pleading  the  cause  of  justice  between  rich  and 
poor,  social  discontent  was  being  fanned  by  exactions  into 
a  fiercer  flame.  While  he  aimed  sarcasm  after  sarcasm  at 
king  worship,  despotism  was  being  organized  into  a  system. 
His  advocacy  of  the  two  principles  of  religious  toleration  and 
Christian  comprehension  coincides  almost  to  a  year  with  the 
opening  of  the  strife  between  the  Eeformation  and  the  Pa- 
pacy. 

"  That  Luther  has  a  fine  genius,"  laughed  Leo  the  Tenth, 
when  he  heard  that  a  German  Professor  had  nailed  some  Prop- 
ositions denouncing  the  abuse  of  Indulgences,  or  of  the  Papal 
power  to  remit  certain  penalties  attached  to  the  commission 
of  sins,  against  the  doors  of  a  church  at  Wittenberg. 


WOLSEY.    1515  TO  1631.  407 

the  "  Quarrel  of  Friars,"  as  the  controversy  was  termed  con- 
temptuously at  Rome,  soon  took  larger  proportions.  If  at 
the  outset  Luther  flung  himself  "prostrate  at  the  feet"  of 
the  Papacy,  and  owned  its  voice  as  the  voice  of  Christ,  the 
sentence  of  Leo  no  sooner  confirmed  the  doctrine  of  Indul- 
gences than  their  opponent  appealed  to  a  future  Council  of 
the  Church.  Two  years  later  the  rupture  was  complete.  A 
Papal  Bull  formally  condemned  the  errors  of  the  Reformer. 
The  condemnation  was  met  with  defiance,  and  Luther  pub- 
licly consigned  the  Bull  to  the  flames.  A  second  condemna- 
tion expelled  him  from  the  bosom  of  the  Church,  and  the 
ban  of  the  Empire  was  soon  added  to  that  of  the  Papacy. 
"  Here  stand  I  ;  I  can  none  other,"  Luther  replied  to  the 
young  Emperor,  Charles  the  Fifth,  as  he  pressed  him  to  re- 
cant in  the  Diet  of  Worms  ;  and  from  the  hiding-place  in  the 
Thuringian  Forest  where  he  was  sheltered  by  the  Elector  of 
Saxony  he  denounced  not  merely,  as  at  first,  the  abuses  of 
the  Papacy,  but  the  Papacy  itself.  The  heresies  of  Wyclif 
were  revived  ;  the  infallibility,  the  authority  of  the  Roman  See, 
the  truth  of  its  doctrines,  the  efficacy  of  its  worship,  were 
denied  and  scoffed  at  in  vigorous  pamphlets  which  issued 
from  his  retreat,  and  were  dispersed  throughout  the  world  by 
the  new  printing-press.  The  old  resentment  of  Germany 
against  the  oppression  of  Rome,  the  moral  revolt  in  its  more 
religious  minds  against  the  secularity  and  corruption  of  the 
Church,  the  disgust  of  the  New  Learning  at  the  superstition 
which  the  Papacy  now  formally  protected,  combined  to  secure 
for  Luther  a  widespread  popularity  and  the  protection  of  the 
northern  princes  of  the  Empire.  In  England,  however,  his 
protest  found  as  yet  no  echo.  England  and  Rome  were  drawn 
to  a  close  alliance  by  the  difficulties  of  their  political  position. 
The  young  king  himself,  a  trained  theologian  and  proud 
of  his  theological  knowledge,  entered  the  lists  against  Luther 
with  an  "  Assertion  of  the  Seven  Sacraments,"  for  which  he 
was  rewarded  by  Leo  with  the  title  of  "  Defender  of  the  Faith." 
The  insolent  abuse  of  the  Reformer's  answer  called  More  and 
Fisher  into  the  field.  As  yet  the  New  Learning,  though 
scared  by  Luther's  intemperate  language,  had  steadily  backed 
him  in  his  struggle.  Erasmus  pleaded  for  him  with  the 
Emperor  ;  Ulrich  von  Hutton  attacked  the  friars  in  satires 
and  invectives  as  violent  as  his  own.  But  the  temper  of  the 


408  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Renascence  was  even  more  antagonistic  to  the  temper  of 
Luther  than  that  of  Rome  itself.  From  the  golden  dream  of 
a  new  age,  wrought  peaceably  and  purely  by  the  slow  progress 
of  intelligence,  the  growth  of  letters,  the  development  of 
human  virtue,  the  Reformer  of  Wittenberg  turned  away 
with  horror.  He  had  little  or  no  sympathy  with  the  new 
culture.  He  despised  reason  as  heartily  as  any  Papal  dog- 
matist could  despise  it.  He  hated  the  very  thought  of  tolera- 
tion or  comprehension.  He  had  been  driven  by  a  moral  and 
intellectual  compulsion  to  declare  the  Roman  system  a  false 
one,  but  it  was  only  to  replace  it  by  another  system  of  doc- 
trine just  as  elaborate,  and  claiming  precisely  the  same  in- 
fallibility. To  degrade  human  nature  was  to  attack  the 
very  base  of  the  New  Learning ;  but  Erasmus  no  sooner  ad- 
vanced to  its  defense  than  Luther  declared  man  to  be  utterly 
enslaved  by  original  sin  and  incapable  through  any  efforts  of 
his  own  of  discovering  truth  or  of  arriving  at  goodness. 
Such  a  doctrine  not  only  annihilated  the  piety  and  wisdom  of 
the  classic  past,  from  which  the  New  Learning  had  drawn 
its  larger  views  of  life  and  of  the  world  ;  it  trampled  in  the 
dust  reason  itself,  the  very  instrument  by  which  More  and 
Erasmus  hoped  to  regenerate  both  knowledge  and  religion. 
To  More  especially,  with  his  keener  perception  of  its  future 
eifect,  this  sudden  revival  of  a  purely  theological  and  dog- 
matic spirit,  severing  Christendom  into  warring  camps,  and 
annihilating  all  hopes  of  union  and  tolerance,  was  especially 
hateful.  The  temper  which  hitherto  had  seemed  so  "  endear- 
ing, gentle,  and  happy,"  suddenly  gave  way.  His  reply  to 
Luther's  attack  upon  the  king  sank  to  the  level  of  the  work 
it  answered.  That  of  Fisher  was  calmer  and  more  argumen- 
tative ;  but  the  divorce  of  the  New  Learning  from  the  Ref- 
ormation was  complete. 

Nor  were  the  political  hopes  of  the  "  Utopia  "  destined  to 

be  realized  by  the  minister  who  at  the  close  of  Henry's  early 

war  with    France   mounted   rapidly  into   power. 

Wolsey.  Thomas  "Wolsey  was  the  son  of  a  wealthy  towns- 
man of  Ipswich,  whose  ability  had  raised  him  into 
notice  at  the  close  of  the  preceding  reign,  arid  who  had  been 
taken  by  Bishop  Fox  into  the  service  of  the  Crown.  His 
extraordinary  powers  hardly  perhaps  required  the  songs, 
dances,  and  carouses,  with  his  indulgence  in  which  he  was 


WOLSEY.    1515  TO  1531.  409 

taunted  by  his  enemies,  to  aid  him  in  winning  the  favor  of 
the  young  sovereign.  From  the  post  of  favorite  he  soon  rose 
to  thaf,  of  minister.  Henry's  resentment  at  Ferdinand's  per- 
fidy enabled  Wolsey  to  carry  out  a  policy  which  reversed  that 
of  his  predecessors.  The  war  had  freed  England  from  the 
fear  of  French  pressure.  Wolsey  was  as  resolute  to  free  her 
from  the  dictation  of  Ferdinand,  and  saw  in  a  French  alliance 
the  best  security  for  English  independence.  In  1514  a  treaty 
was  concluded  with  Lewis.  The  same  friendship  was  con- 
tinued to  his  successor  Francis  the  First,  whose  march  across 
the  Alps  for  the  reconquest  of  Lornbardy  was  facilitated  by 
Henry  and  Wolsey,  in  the  hope  that  while  the  war  lasted 
England  would  be  free  from  all  fear  of  attack,  and  that 
Francis  himself  might  be  brought  to  inevitable  ruin.  These 
hopes  were  defeated  by  his  great  victory  at  Marignano.  But 
Francis  in  the  moment  of  triumph  saw  himself  confronted 
by  a  new  rival.  Master  of  Castile  and  Aragon,  of  Naples 
and  the  Netherlands,  the  new  Spanish  king,  Charles  the 
Fifth,  rose  into  a  check  on  the  French  monarchy  such  r.s  the 
policy  of  Henry  or  Wolsey  had  never  been  able  to  construct 
before.  The  alliance  of  England  was  eagerly  sought  by  both 
sides,  and  the  administration  of  Wolsey,  amid  all  its  ceaseless 
diplomacy,  for  seven  years  kept  England  out  of  war.  The 
Peace,  as  we  have  seen,  restored  the  hopes  of  the  New  Learn- 
ing ;  it  enabled  Colet  to  reform  education,  Erasmus  to  un- 
dertake the  regeneration  of  the  Church,  More  to  set  on  foot 
a  new  science  of  politics.  But  peace  as  Wolsey  used  it  was 
fatal  to  English  freedom.  In  the  political  hints  which  lie 
scattered  over  the  "  Utopia  "  More  notes  with  bitter  irony  the 
advance  of  the  new  despotism.  It  was  only  in  "  Nowhere" 
that  a  sovereign  was  "  removable  on  suspicion  of  a  design  to 
enslave  his  people."  In  England  the  work  of  slavery  was 
being  quietly  wrought,  hints  the  great  lawyer,  through  the 
law.  "There  will  never  be  wanting  some  pretense  for  de- 
ciding in  the  king's  favor ;  as  that  equity  is  on  his  side,  or 
the  strict  letter  of  the  law,  or  some  forced  interpretation  of 
it ;  or  if  none  of  these,  that  the  royal  prerogative  ought  with 
conscientious  judges  to  outweigh  all  other  considerations." 
We  are  startled  at  the  precision  with  which  More  maps  out 
the  expedients  by  which  the  law  courts  were  to  lend  them- 
selves to  the  advance  of  tyranny  till  their  crowning  judgment 


410  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

in  the  case  of  ship-money.  But  behind  these  judicial  ex- 
pedients lay  great  principles  of  absolutism,  which  partly  from, 
the  example  of  foreign  monarchies,  partly  from  the  sense  of 
social  and  political  insecurity,  aiid  yet  more  from  the  isolated 
position  of  the  Crown,  were  gradually  winning  their  way  in 
public  opinion.  "These  notions,"  he  goes  boldly  on,  "are 
fostered  by  the  maxim  that  the  king  can  do  no  wrong,  how- 
ever much  he  may  wish  to  do  it  ;  that  not  only  the  property 
but  the  persons  of  his  subjects  are  his  own  ;  and  that  a  man 
has  a  right  to  no  more  than  the  king's  goodness  thinks  fit 
not  to  take  from  him."  In  the  hands  of  Wolsey  these  maxims 
were  transformed  into  principles  of  State.  The  checks 
which  had  been  imposed  on  the  action  of  the  sovereign  by 
the  presence  of  great  prelates  and  nobles  at  his  council  were 
practically  removed.  All  authority  was  concentrated  in  the 
hands  of  a  single  minister.  Henry  had  munificently  rewarded 
Wolsey's  services  to  the  Crown.  He  had  been  promoted  to 
the  See  of  Lincoln  and  thence  to  the  Archbishopric  of  York. 
Henry  procured  his  elevation  to  the  rank  of  Cardinal,  and 
raised  him  to  the  post  of  Chancellor.  The  revenues  of  two 
sees  whose  tenants  were  foreigners  fell  into  his  hands  ;  he 
held  the  bishopric  of  Winchester  and  the  abbacy  of  St. 
Albans  ;  he  was  in  receipt  of  pensions  from  France  and 
Spain,  while  his  official  emoluments  were  enormous.  His 
pomp  was  almost  royal.  A  train  of  prelates  and  nobles  fol- 
lowed him  wherever  he  moved  ;  his  household  was  composed 
of  five  hundred  persons  of  noble  birth,  and  its  chief  posts 
were  held  by  knights  and  barons  of  the  realm.  He  spent  his 
vast  wealth  with  princely  ostentation.  Two  of  his  houses, 
Hampton  Court  and  York  House,  the  later  Whitehall,  were 
splendid  enough  to  serve  at  his  fall  as  royal  palaces.  His 
school  at  Ipswich  was  eclipsed  by  the  glories  of  his  founda- 
tion at  Oxford,  whose  name  of  Cardinal  College  has  been  lost 
in  its  later  title  of  Christ-church.  Nor  was  this  magnifi- 
cence a  mere  show  of  power.  The  whole  direction  of  home 
and  foreign  affairs  rested  with  Wolsey  alone  ;  as  Chancellor 
he  stood  at  the  head  of  public  justice  ;  his  elevation  to  the 
office  of  Legate  rendered  him  supreme  in  the  Church.  Enor- 
mous as  was  the  mass  of  work  which  he  undertook,  it  was 
thoroughly  done  :  his  administration  of  the  royal  treasury 
was  economical ;  the  number  of  his  despatches  is  hardly  less 


WOLSEY.      1515   TO   1531.  411 

remarkable  than  the  care  bestowed  upon'  each  ;  even  More, 
an  avowed  enemy,  confesses  that  as  Chancellor  he  surpassed 
all  men's  expectations.  The  court  of  chancery,  indeed,  be- 
came so  crowded  through  the  character  for  expedition  and 
justice  which  it  gained  under  his  rule  that  subordinate  courts 
had  to  be  created  for  its  relief.  It  was  this  concentration  of 
all  secular  and  ecclesiastical  power  in  a  single  hand  which 
accustomed  England  to  the  personal  government  which  be- 
gan with  Henry  the  Eighth  ;  and  it  was,  above  all,  Wolsey's 
long  tenure  of  the  whole  Papal  authority  within  the  realm, 
and  the  consequent  suspension  of  appeals  to  Rome,  that  led 
men  to  acquiesce  at  a  later  time  in  Henry's  claim  of  religions 
supremacy.  For  prond  as  was  Wolsey's  bearing  and  high  as 
were  his  natural  powers  he  stood  before  England  as  the  mere 
creature  of  the  king.  Greatness,  wealth,  authority  he  held, 
and  owned  he  held,  simply  at  the  royal  will.  In  raising  his 
low-born  favorite  to  the  head  of  Church  and  State  Henry 
was  gathering  all  religions  as  well  as  all  civil  authority  into 
his  personal  grasp.  The  nation  which  trembled  before  Wol- 
sey  learned  to  tremble  before  the  king  who  could  destroy 
Wolsey  by  a  breath. 

The  rise  of  Charles  of  Austria  gave  a  new  turn  to  "Wolsey's 
policy.  Possessor  of  the  Netherlands,  of  Franche  Comte,  of 
Spain,  the  death  of  his  grandfather  Maximilian  Wolsey 
added  to  his  dominions  the  heritage  of  the  Ho.  3e  and  the 
of  Austria  in  Swabia  and  on  the  Danube,  and  Parliament 
opened  the  way  for  his  election  as  Emperor.  France  saw 
herself  girt  in  on  every  side  by  a  power  greater  than  her 
own  ;  and  to  Wolsey  and  his  master  the  time  seemed  come 
for  a  bolder  game.  Disappointed  in  his  hopes  of  obtaining 
the  Imperial  crown  on  the  death  of  Maximilian,  Henry 
turned  to  the  dream  of  "  recovering  his  French  inheritance," 
which  he  had  never  really  abandoned,  and,  which  was  care- 
fully fed  by  his  nephew  Charles.  Nor  was  Wolsey  forgot- 
ten. If  Henry  coveted  France,  his  minister  coveted  no  less 
a  prize  than  the  Papacy  ;  and  the  young  Emperor  was 
lavish  of  promises  of  support  in  any  coming  election.  The 
result  of  these  seductions  was  quickly  seen.  In  May,  1520, 
Charles  landed  at  Dover  to  \isit  Henry,  and  King  and  Em- 
peror rode  alone  to  Canterbury.  It  was  in  vain  that  Francis 
strove  to  retain  Henry's  friendship  by  an  interview  near 


412  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Guisnes,  to  which  the  profuse  expenditure  of  bothmonarchs 
gave  the  name  of  the  Field  of  Cloth  of  Gold.  A  second  in- 
terview between  Charles  and  his  uncle  as  he  returned  from 
the  meeting  with  Francis  ended  in  the  secret  confederacy  of 
the  two  foreigners,  and  the  promise  of  the  Emperor  to  marry 
Henry's  one  child,  Mary  Tudor.  Her  right  to  the  throne 
was  asserted  by  a  deed  which  proved  how  utterly  the  baron- 
age now  lay  at  the  mercy  of  the  king.  The  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham stood  first  in  blood  as  in  power  among  the  English 
nobles ;  he  was  the  descendant  of  Edward  the  Third's 
youngest  son,  and  if  Mary's  succession  were  denied  he  stood 
heir  to  the  throne.  His  hopes  had  been  fanned  by  prophets 
and  astrologers,  and  wild  words  told  his  purpose  to  seize  the 
Crown  on  Henry's  death  in  defiance  of  every  opponent. 
But  word  and  act  had  for  two  years  been  watched  by  the 
king  ;  and  in  1521  the  Duke  was  arrested,  condemned  as  a 
traitor  by  his  peers,  and  beheaded  on  Tower  Hill.  The 
French  alliance  came  to  an  end,  and  at  the  outbreak  of  war 
between  France  and  Spain  a  secret  league  was  concluded  at 
Calais  between  the  Pope,  the  Emperor,  and  Henry.  The 
first  result  of  the  new  war  policy  at  home  was  quickly  seen. 
Wolsey's  economy  had  done  nothing  more  than  tide  the 
Crown  through  the  past  years  of  peace.  But  now  that 
Henry  had  promised  to  raise  forty  thousand  men  for  the 
coming  campaign  the  ordinary  resources  of  the  treasury 
were  utterly  insufficient.  With  the  instinct  of  despotism 
Wolsey  shrank  from  reviving  the  tradition  of  the  Parliament. 
Though  Henry  had  thrice  called  together  the  Houses  to 
supply  the  expenses  of  his  earlier  struggle  with  France, 
Wolsey  governed  during  seven  years  of  peace  without  once 
assembling  them.  War  made  a  Parliament  inevitable,  but 
for  a  while  the  Cardinal  strove  to  delay  its  summons  by  a 
wide  extension  of  the  practise  which  Edward  the  Fourth  had 
invented  of  raising  money  by  forced  loans  or  "  Benevo- 
lences," to  be  repaid  from  the  first  subsidy  of  a  coming  Par- 
liament. Large  sums  were  assessed  on  every  county. 
Twenty  thousand  pounds  were  exacted  from  London  ;  and 
its  wealthier  citizens  were  summoned  before  the  Cardinal 
and  required  to  give  an  account  of  the  value  of  their  estates. 
Commissioners  were  despatched  into  each  shire  for  the  pur- 
poses of  assessment,  and  precepts  were  issued  on  their  in- 


WOLSEY.    1515  TO  1531.  413 

formation,  requiring  in  some  cases  supplies  of  soldiers,  in 
others  a  tenth  of  a  man's  income,  for  the  king's  service. 
So  poor,  however,  was  the  return  that  in  the  following  year 
Wolsey  was  forced  to  summon  Parliament  and  lay  before  it 
the  unprecedented  demand  of  a  property-tax  of  twenty  per 
cent.  The  demand  was  made  by  the  Cardinal  in  person, 
but  he  was  received  with  obstinate  silence.  It  was  in  vain 
that  Wolsey  called  on  member  after  member  to  answer  ;  and 
his  appeal  to  More,  who  had  been  elected  to  the  chair  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  was  met  by  the  Speaker's  falling  on  his 
knees  and  representing  his  powerlessness  to  reply  till  he  had 
received  instructions  from  the  House  itself.  The  effort  to 
overawe  the  Commons  failed,  and  Wolsey  no  sooner  with- 
drew than  an  angry  debate  began.  He  again  returned  to 
answer  the  objections  which  had  been  raised,  and  again  the 
Commons  foiled  the  minister's  attempt  to  influence  their 
deliberations  by  refusing  to  discuss  the  matter  in  his  pres- 
ence. The  struggle  continued  for  a  fortnight ;  and  though 
successful  in  procuring  a  subsidy,  the  court  party  were 
forced  to  content  themselves  with  less  than  half  Wolsey's 
demand.  Convocation  betrayed  as  independent  a  spirit ; 
and  when  money  was  again  needed  two  years  later,  the 
Cardinal  was  driven  once  more  to  the  system  of  Benevol- 
ences. A  tenth  was  demanded  from  the  laity,  and  a  fourth 
from  the  clergy  in  every  county  by  the  royal  commissioners. 
There  was  "sore  grudging  and  murmuring,"  Warharn  wrote 
to  the  court,  "among  the  people."  "If  men  should  give 
their  goods  by  a  commission,"  said  the  Kentish  squires, 
"then  it  would  be  worse  than  the  taxes  of  France,  and 
England  should  be  bond,  not  free."  The  political  instinct 
of  the  nation  discerned  as  of  old  that  in  the  question  of  self- 
taxation  was  involved  that  of  the  very  existence  of  freedom. 
The  clergy  put  themselves  in  the  forefront  of  the  resistance, 
and  preached  from  every  pulpit  that  the  commission  was 
contrary  to  the  liberties  of  the  realm,  and  that  the  king 
could  take  no  man's  goods  but  by  process  of  law.  So  stirred 
was  the  nation  that  Wolsey  bent  to  the  storm,  and  offered 
to  rely  on  the  voluntary  loans  of  each  subject.  But  tho 
statute  of  Richard  the  Third  which  declared  all  exaction  of 
benevolences  illegal  was  recalled  to  memory  ;  the  demand 
was  evaded  by  London,  and  the  commissioners  were  driven 


414  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

out  of  Kent.  A  revolt  broke  out  in  Suffolk  ;  the  men  of 
Cambridge  and  Norwich  threatened  to  rise.  There  was  in 
fact  a  general  strike  of  the  employers.  Clothmakers  dis- 
charged their  workers,  farmers  put  away  their  servants. 
"  They  say  the  king  asketh  so  much  that  they  be  not  able 
to  do  as  they  have  done  before  this  time."  Such  a  peasant 
insurrection  as  was  raging  in  Germany  was  only  prevented  by 
the  unconditional  withdrawal  of  the  royal  demand. 

"Wolsey's  defeat  saved  English  freedom  for  the  moment ; 
but  the  danger  from  which  he  shrank  was  not  merely  that  of  a 
-1^  conflict  with  the  sense  of  liberty.  The  murmurs 
Agrarian  of  the  Kentish  squires  only  swelled  the  ever-deep- 
Discontent.  ening  voice  of  public  discontent.  If  the  condition 
of  the  land  question  in  the  end  gave  strength  to  the  Crown  by 
making  it  the  security  for  public  order,  it  became  a  terrible 
peril  at  every  crisis  of  conflict  between  the  monarchy  and  the 
landowners.  The  steady  rise  in  the  price  of  wool  was  giving 
a  fresh  impulse  to  the  agrarian  changes  which  had  now  been 
going  on  for  over  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  to  the  throwing 
together  of  the  smaller  holdings,  and  the  introduction  of 
sheep-farming  on  an  enormous  scale.  The  new  wealth  of 
the  merchant  classes  helped  on  the  change.  They  invested 
largely  in  land,  and  these  "  farming  gentlemen  and  clerking 
knights,"  as  Latimer  bitterly  styled  them,  were  restrained  by 
few  traditions  or  associations  in  their  eviction  of  the  smaller 
tenants.  The  land  indeed  had  been  greatly  underlet,  and  as 
its  value  rose  the  temptation  to  raise  the  customary  rents 
became  irresistible.  "  That  which  went  heretofore  for  twenty 
or  forty  pounds  a  year,"  we  learn  from  the  same  source, 
"  now  is  let  for  fifty  or  a  hundred."  But  it  had  been  only  by 
this  low  scale  of  rent  that  the  small  yeomanry  class  had  been 
enabled  to  exist.  "  My  father,"  says  Latimer,  "  was  a  yeo- 
man, and  had  no  lands  of  his  own  ;  only  he  had  a  farm  of 
three  or  four  pounds  by  the  year  at  the  uttermost,  and  here- 
upon he  tilled  so  much  as  kept  half-a-dozen  men.  He  had 
walk  for  a  hundred  sheep,  and  my  mother  milked  thirty 
kine  ;  he  was  able  arid  did  find  the  king  a  harness  with  him- 
self and  his  horse  while  he  came  to  the  place  that  he  should 
receive  the  king's  wages.  I  can  remember  that  I  buckled 
his  harness  when  he  went  to  Blackheath  Field.  He  kept  me 
to  school ;  he  married  my  sisters  with  five  pounds  apiece,  so 


WOLSEY.    1515  TO  1531.  4:15 

that  he  brought  them  up  in  godliness  and  fear  of  God.  He 
kept  hospitality  for  his  poor  neighbors,  and  some  alms  he 
gave  to  the  poor,  and  all  this  he  did  of  the  same  farm,  where 
he  that  now  hath  it  payeth  sixteen  pounds  by  year  or  more, 
and  is  not  able  to  do  anything  for  his  prince,  for  himself,  nor 
for  his  children,  or  give  a  cup  of  drink  to  the  poor."  Increase 
of  rent  ended  with  such  tenants  in  the  relinquishment  of  their 
holdings,  but  the  bitterness  of  ejection  was  increased  by  the  in- 
iquitous means  which  were  often  employed  to  bring  it  about. 
The  farmers,  if  we  believe  More  in  1515,  were  "  got  rid  of 
either  by  fraud  or  force,  or  tired  out  with  repeated  wrongs 
into  parting  with  their  property."  "In  this  way  it  comes 
to  pass  that  these  poor  wretches,  men,  women,  husbands, 
orphans,  widows,  parents  with  little  children,  households 
greater  in  number  than  in  wealth  (for  arable  farming  requires 
many  hands,  while  one  shepherd  and  herdsman  will  suffice 
for  a  pasture  farm),  all  these  emigrate  from  their  native  fields 
without  knowing  where  to  go."  The  sale  of  their  scanty 
household  stuff  drove  them  to  wander  homeless  abroad,  to  be 
thrown  into  prison  as  vagabonds,  to  beg  and  to  steal.  Yet  in 
the  face  of  such  a  spectacle  as  this  we  still  find  the  old  com- 
plaint of  scarcity  of  labor,  and  the  old  legal  remedy  for  it  in 
a  fixed  scale  of  wages.  The  social  disorder,  in  fact,  baffled 
the  sagacity  of  English  statesmen,  and  they  could  find  no 
better  remedy  for  it  than  laws  against  the  further  extension 
of  sheep-farms,  and  a  terrible  increase  of  public  executions. 
Both  were  alike  fruitless.  Enclosures  and  evictions  went  on 
as  before.  "  If  you  do  not  remedy  the  evils  which  produce 
thieves,"  More  urged  with  bitter  truth,  "  the  rigorous  execu- 
tion of  justice  in  punishing  thieves  will  be  vain."  But  even 
More  could  only  suggest  a  remedy  which,  efficacious  as  it  was 
subsequently  to  prove,  had  yet  to  wait  a  century  for  its  reali- 
zation. "  Let  the  woolen  manufacture  be  introduced,  so 
that  honest  employment  may  be  found  for  those  whom  want 
has  made  thieves  or  will  make  thieves  ere  long."  The  mass 
of  social  disorder  grew  steadily  greater ;  while  the  break  up 
of  the  great  military  households  of  the  nobles  which  was  still 
going  on,  and  the  return  of  wounded  and  disabled  soldiers 
from  the  wars,  introduced  a  dangerous  leaven  of  outrage  and 
crime. 
This  public  discontent,  as  well  as  the  exhaustion  of  the 


416  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

treasury,  added  bitterness  to  the  miserable  result  of  the  war. 
To  France,  indeed,  the  struggle  had  been  disastrous,  for  the 

loss  of  the  Milanese  and  the  capture  of  Francis 
TV  e  *ne  First  m  khe  °lefeat  °f  Pavia  laid  her  at 

the  feet  of  the  Emperor.  But  Charles  had  no 
purpose  of  carrying  out  the  pledges  by  which  he  had  lured 
England  into  war.  Wolsey  had  seen  two  partizans  of  the 
Emperor  successively  raised  to  the  Papal  chair.  The  schemes 
of  winning  anew  "  our  inheritance  of  France  "  had  ended 
in  utter  failure ;  England,  as  before,  gained  nothing  from 
two  useless  campaigns,  and  it  was  plain  that  Charles  meant 
it  to  win  nothing.  He  concluded  an  armistice  with  his 
prisoner  ;  he  set  aside  all  projects  of  a  joint  invasion  ;  he 
broke  his  pledge  to  wed  Mary  Tudor,  and  married  a  princess 
of  Portugal  ;  he  pressed  for  peace  with  France  which  would 
give  him  Burgundy.  It  was  time  for  Henry  and  his  minister 
to  change  their  course.  They  resolved  to  withdraw  from  all 
active  part  in  the  rivalry  of  the  two  powers,  and  a  treaty  was 
secretly  concluded  with  France.  But  Henry  remained  on 
fair  terms  with  the  Emperor,  and  abstained  from  any  part  in 
the  fresh  war  which  broke  out  on  the  refusal  of  the  French 
monarch  to  fulfil  the  terms  by  which  he  had  purchased  his 
release.  No  longer  spurred  by  the  interest  of  great  events, 
the  king  ceased  to  take  a  busy  part  in  foreign  politics,  and 
gave  himself  to  hunting  and  sport.  Among  the  fairest  and 
gayest  ladies  of  his  court  stood  Anne  Boleyn.  Her  gaiety 
and  wit  soon  won  Henry's  favor,  and  grants  of  honors  to 
her  father  marked  her  influence.  In  1524  a  new  color  was 
given  to  this  intimacy  by  a  resolve  on  the  king's  part  to 
break  1m  marriage  with  the  queen.  The  death  of  every 
child  save  Mary  may  have  woke  scruples  as  to  the  lawfulness 
of  a  marriage  on  which  a  curse  seemed  to  rest ;  the  need  of  a 
male  heir  may  have  deepened  this  impression.  But,  what- 
ever were  the  grounds  of  his  action,  Henry  from  this  moment 
pressed  the  Roman  See  to  grant  him  a  divorce.  Clement's 
consent  to  his  wish,  however,  would  mean  a  break  with  the 
Emperor,  Catharine's  nephew  ;  and  the  Pope  was  now  at 
the  Emperor's  mercy.  While  the  English  envoy  was  mooting 
the  question  of  divorce,  the  surprise  of  Rome  by  an  Imperial 
force  brought  home  to  Clement  his  utter  helplessness  ;  the 
next  year  the  Pope  was  in  fact  a  prisoner  in  the  Emperor's 


WOLSEY.    1515  TO  1531.  417 

hands  after  the  storm  and  sack  of  Rome.  Meanwhile  a  secret 
suit  which  had  been  brought  before  Wolsey  as  legate  was 
suddenly  dropped  ;  as  Catharine  denied  the  facts  on  which 
Henry  rested  his  case  her  appeal  would  have  carried  the 
matter  to  the  tribunal  of  the  Pope,  and  Clement's  decision 
could  hardly  have  been,  a  favorable  one.  The  difficulties  of 
the  divorce  were  indeed  manifest.  One  of  the  most  learned 
of  the  English  bishops,  Fisher  of  Rochester,  declared  openly 
against  it.  The  English  theologians,  who  were  consulted  on 
the  validity  of  the  Papal  dispensation  which  had  allowed 
Henry's  marriage  to  take  place,  referred  the  king  to  the 
Pope  for  a  decision  of  the  question.  The  commercial  classes 
shrank  from  a  step  which  involved  an  irretrievable  breach 
with  the  Emperor,  who  was  master  of  their  great  market  in 
Flanders.  Above  all,  the  iniquity  of  the  proposal  jarred 
against  the  public  conscience.  But  neither  danger  nor  shame 
availed  against  the  king's  wilfulness  and  passion.  A  great 
party  too  had  gathered  to  Anne's  support.  Her  uncle  the 
I)uke  of  Norfolk,  her  father,  now  Lord  Rochford,  afterward 
Earl  of  Wiltshire,  pushed  the  divorce  resolutely  on  ;  the 
brilliant  group  of  young  courtiers  to  which  her  brother  be- 
longed saw  in  her  success  their  own  elevation  ;  and  the  Duke 
of  Suffolk  with  the  hulk  of  the  nobles  hoped  through  her 
means  to  bring  about  the  ruin  of  the  statesman  before  whom 
they  trembled.  It  was  needful  for  the  Cardinal  to  find  some 
expedients  to  carry  out  the  king's  will  ;  but  his  schemes 
one  by  one  broke  down  before  the  difficulties  of  the  Pnpal 
Court.  Clement  indeed,  perplexed  at  once  by  his  wish  to 
gratify  Henry,  his  own  conscientious  doubts  as  to  the  course 
proposed,  and  his  terror  of  the  Emperor  whose  power  was 
now  predominant  in  Italy,  even  blamed  Wolsey  for  having 
hindered  the  king  from  judging  the  matter  in  his  own  realm, 
and  marrying  on  the  sentence  of  his  own  courts.  Henry 
was  resolute  in  demanding  the  express  sanction  of  the  Pope 
to  his  divorce,  and  this  Clement  steadily  evaded.  He  at  lust, 
however,  consented  to  a  legatine  commission  for  the  trial  of 
the  case  in  England.  In  this  commission  Cardinal  Cam- 
peggio  was  joined  with  Wolsey.  Months,  however,  passed  in 
fruitless  negotiations.  The  Cardinals  pressed  on  Catharine 
the  expediency  of  her  withdrawal  to  a  religious  house,  while 
Henry  pressed  on  the  Pope  that  of  a  settlement  of  the  matter 

27 


418  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

by  .his  formal  declaration  against  the  validity  of  the  marriage.'" 
At  last  in  1529  the  two  Legates  opened  their  court  in  the 
great  hall  of  the  Blackfriars.  Henry  briefly  announced  his 
resolve  to  live  no  longer  in  mortal  sin.  The  queen  offered 
an  appeal  to  Clement,  and  on  the  refusal  of  the  Legates  to 
admit  it  she  flung  herself  at  Henry's  feet.  "  Sire/'  said 
Catharine,  "I  beseech  you  to  pity  me,  a  woman  and  a 
stranger,  without  an  assured  friend  and  without  an  indifferent 
counselor.  I  take  God  to  witness  that  I  have  always  been 
to  you  a  true  and  loyal  wife,  that  I  have  made  it  my  constant 
duty  to  seek  your  pleasure,  that  I  have  loved  all  whom  you 
loved,  whether  I  have  reason  or  not,  whether  they  are  friends 
to  me  or  foes.  I  have  been  your  wife  for  years,  I  have 
brought  you  many  children.  God  knows  that  when  I  came 
to  your  bed  I  was  a  virgin,  and  I  put  it  to  your  own  con- 
science to  say  whether  it  was  not  so.  If  there  be  any  offense 
which  can  be  alleged  against  me  I  consent  to  depart  with  in- 
famy ;  if  not,  then  I  pray  you  to  dome  justice."  The  piteous 
appeal  was  wasted  on  a  king  who  was  already  entertaining 
Anne  Boleyn  with  royal  state  in  his  own  palace.  The  trial  pro- 
ceeded, and  the  court  assembled  to  pronounce  sentence. 
Henry's  hopes  were  at  their  highest  when  they  were  suddenly 
dashed  to  the  ground.  At  the  opening  of  the  proceedings 
Campeggio  rose  to  declare  the  court  adjourned.  The  ad- 
journment was  a  mere  evasion.  The  pressure  of  the  Im- 
perialists had  at  last  forced  Clement  to  summon  the  cause  to 
his  own  tribunal  at  Eome,  and  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Legates 
was  at  an  end. 

"Now  see  I,"  cried  the  Duke  of  Suffolk  as  he  dashed  his 
hand  on  the  table,  "  that  the  old  saw  is  true,  that  there  was 

never  Legate  or  Cardinal  that  did  good  to  Eng- 
ofWoEJ.    land!"     "Of  all   men  living,"  Wolsey    boldly 

retorted,  "you,  my  lord  Duke,  have  the  least: 
reason  to  dispraise  Cardinals,  for  if  I,  a  poor  Cardinal,  had 
not  been,  you  would  not  now  have  had  a  head  on  your  shoul- 
ders wherewith  to  make  such  a  brag  in  disrepute  of  us." 
But  both  the  Cardinal  and  his  enemies  knew  that  the  min- 
ister's doom  was  sealed.  Through  the  twenty  years  of  his 
reign  Henry  had  known  nothing  of  opposition  to  his  will. 
His  imperious  temper  had  chafed  at  the  weary  negotiations, 
the  subterfuges  and  perfidies  of  the  Pope.  Ills  wrath  fell  at 


WOLSEY.      1515   TO   1531. 

once  on  Wolsey,  who  had  dissuaded  him  from  acting  at  the 
first  independently,  from  conducting  the  cause  in  his  own 
courts  and  acting  on  the  sentence  of  his  own  judges  ;  who 
had  counseled  him  to  seek  a  divorce  from  Rome  and  promised 
him  success  in  his  suit.  From  the  close  of  the  Legatine  court 
he  would  see  him  no  more.  If  Wolsey  still  remained  min- 
ister for  a  while,  it  was  because  the  thread  of  the  complex 
foreign  negotiations  could  not  be  roughly  broken.  Here  too, 
however,  failure  awaited  him  as  he  saw  himself  deceived  and 
outwitted  by  the  conclusion  of  peace  between  France  and  the 
Emperor  in  a  new  treaty  at  Cambray.  Not  only  was  his 
French  policy  no  longer  possible,  but  a  reconciliation  with 
Charles  was  absolutely  needful,  and  such  a  reconciliation 
could  only  be  brought  about  by  Wolsey's  fall.  He  was  at 
once  prosecuted  for  receiving  bulls  from  Rome  in  violation 
of  the  Statute  of  Prasmunire.  A  few  days  later  he  was  de- 
prived of  the  seals.  Wolsey  was  prostrated  by  the  blow. 
He  offered  to  give  up  everything  that  he  possessed  if  the 
king  would  but  cease  from  his  displeasure.  "  His  face," 
wrote  the  French  ambassador,  "  is  dwindled  to  half  its  natural 
size.  In  truth  his  misery  is  such  that  his  enemies,  English- 
men as  they  are,  cannot  help  pitying  him."  Office  and  wealth 
were  flung  desperately  at  the  king's  feet,  and  for  the  moment 
Henry  seemed  contented  with  his  disgrace.  A  thousand 
boats  full  of  Londoners  covered  the  Thames  to  see  the 
Cardinal's  barge  pass  to  the  Tower,  but  he  was  permitted  to 
retire  to  Esher.  Pardon  was  granted  him  on  surrender  of  his 
vast  possessions  to  the  Crown,  and  he  was  permitted  to  with- 
draw to  his  diocese  of  York,  the  one  dignity  he  had  been 
suffered  to  retain.  But  hardly  a  year  had  passed  before  the 
jealousy  of  his  political  rivals  was  roused  by  the  king's  regrets, 
and  on  the  eve  of  his  installation  feast  he  was  arrested  on  a 
charge  of  high  treason,  and  conducted  by  the  Lieutenant  of 
the  Tower  towards  London.  Already  broken  by  his  enormous 
labors,  by  internal  disease,  and  the  sense  of  his  fall,  Wolsey 
accepted  the  arrest  as  a  sentence  of  death.  An  attack  of 
dysentery  forced  him  to  rest  at  the  abbey  of  Leicester,  and 
as  he  reached  the  gate  he  said  feebly  to  the  brethren  who  met 
him,  "I  am  come  to  lay  my  bones  among  you."  On  his 
death-bed  his  thoughts  still  clung  to  the  prince  whom  he  had 
served.  "  He  is  a  prince,"  said  the  dying  man  to  the  Lieu- 


420  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

tenant  of  the  Tower,  "  of  a  most  royal  courage  ;  sooner  than 
miss  any  part  of  his  will  he  will  endanger  one  half  of  his 
kingdom  :  and  I  do  assure  you  I  have  often  kneeled  before 
him,  sometimes  for  three  hours  together,  to  persuade  him 
from  his  appetite,  and  could  not  prevail.  And,  Master 
Knyghton,  had  I  but  served  God  as  diligently  as  I  have  served 
the  king,  he  would  not  have  given  me  over  in  my  gray  hairs. 
But  this  is  my  due  reward  for  my  pains  and  study,  not  re- 
garding my  service  to  God,  but  only  my  duty  to  my  prince." 
No  words  could  paint  with  so  terrible  a  truthfulness  the 
spirit  of  the  new  despotism  which  Wolsey  had  done  more 
than  any  of  those  who  went  before  him  to  build  up.  All 
sense  of  loyalty  to  England,  to  its  freedom,  to  its  institutions, 
had  utterly  passed  away.  The  one  duty  which  the  statesman 
owned  was  a  duty  to  his  "prince,"  a  prince  whose  personal 
will  and  appetite  was  overriding  the  highest  interests  of  the 
State,  trampling  underfoot  the  wisest  counsels,  and  crushing 
with  the  blind  ingratitude  of  Fate  the  servants  who  opposed 
him.  But  even  Wolsey,  while  he  recoiled  from  the  mon- 
strous form  which  had  revealed  itself,  could  hardly  have 
dreamed  of  the  work  of  destruction  which  the  royal  courage, 
and  yet  more  royal  appetite,  of  his  master  was  to  accomplish 
in  the  years  to  come. 


Section  VI.— Thomas  Cromwell.    1530—1540. 

[Authorities.— Cromwell's  early  life  as  told  by  Foxe  is  a  mass  of  fable  ;  what  we 
really  know  of  it  may  be  seen  conveniently  put  together  in  Dean  Hook's  "  Life  of 
Archbishop  Cranmer."  For  his  ministry  the  only  real  authorities  are  the  State 
papers  for  this  period,  which  are  now  being  calendared  for  the  Blaster  of  the 
Rolls.  For  Sir'Thomas  More,  we  have  a  touching  life  by  his  son-in-law,  Roper. 
The  more  important  documents  for  the  religious  history  of  the  time  will  be  found 
in  Mr.  Pocock's  new  edition  of  Burnet's  "  History  of  the  Reformation  "  :  those 
relating  to  the  dissolution  of  the  Monasteries,  in  the  collection  of  letters  on  that 
subject  published  by  the  Camden  Society,  and  in  the  "Original  Letters"  of  Sir 
Henry  Ellis.  A.  mass  of  material  of  various  value  has  been  accumulated  by 
Strype  in  his  collections,  which  begin  at  this  time.  Mr.  Froude's  narrative  ("  His- 
tory of  England,"  vols.  i.  ii.  iii.).  though  of  great  literary  merit,  is  disfigured  by 
a  love  of  paradox,  by  hero-worship,  and  by  a  reckless  defense  of  tyranny  and 
crime.  It  possesses,  during  this  period,  little  or  no  historical  value.] 

The  ten  years  which  follow  the  fall  of  Wolsey  are  among 
the  most  momentous  in  our  history.  The  New  Monarchy 
at  last  realized  its  power,  and  the  work  for  which  Wolsey 
had  paved  the  way  was  carried  out  with  a  terrible  thorough- 


THOMAS  CROMWELL.      1530  TO   1540.  421 

ness.  The  one  great  institution  which  could  still  offer  resist- 
ance to  the  royal  will  was  struck  down.  The  Church  became 
a  mere  instrument  of  the  central  despotism.  The  people 
learned  their  helplessness  in  rebellions  easily  suppressed  and 
avenged  with  ruthless  severity.  A  reign  of  terror,  organized 
with  consummate  and  merciless  skill,  held  England  panic- 
stricken  at  Henry's  feet.  The  noblest  heads  rolled  on  the 
block.  Virtue  and  learning  could  not  save  Thomas  More ; 
royal  descent  could  not  save  Lady  Salisbury.  The  putting 
away  of  one  queen,  the  execution  of  another,  taught  England 
that  nothing  was  too  high  for  Henry's  "courage"  or  too 
sacred  for  his  "appetite."  Parliament  assembled  only  to 
sanction  acts  of  unscrupulous  tyranny,  or  to  build  up  by  its 
own  statutes  the  great  fabric  of  absolute  rule.  All  the  con- 
stitutional safeguards  of  English  freedom  were  swept  away. 
Arbitrary  taxation,  arbitrary  legislation,  arbitrary  imprison- 
ment were  powers  claimed  without  dispute  and  unsparingly 
exercised  by  the  Crown. 

The  history  of  this  great  revolution,  for  it  is  nothing  less, 
is  the  history  of  a  single  man.  In  the  whole  line  of  English 
statesmen  there  is  no  one  of  whom  we  would  will- 
ingly know  so  much,  no  one  of  whom  we  really 
know  so  little,  as  Thomas  Cromwell.  When  he 
meets  us  in  Henry's  service  he  had  already  passed  middle  life  ; 
and  during  his  earlier  years  it  is  hardly  possible  to  do  more 
than  disentangle  a  few  fragmentary  facts  from  the  mass  of 
fable  which  gathered  round  them.  His  youth  was  one  of 
roving  adventure.  Whether  he  was  the  son  of  a  poor  black- 
smith at  Putney  or  no,  he  could  hardly  have  been  more  than 
a  boy  when  he  was  engaged  in  the  service  of  the  Marchioness 
of  Dorset.  He  must  still  have  been  young  when  he  took  part 
as  a  common  soldier  in  the  wars  of  Italy,  "a  ruffian,"  as  he 
owned  afterwards  to  Cranmer  in  the  most  unscrupulous 
school  the  world  contained.  But  it  was  a  school  in  which  he 
learned  lessons  even  more  dangerous  than  those  of  the  camp. 
He  not  only  mastered  the  Italian  language  but  drank  in  the 
manners  and  tone  of  the  Italy  around  him,  the  Italy  of  the 
Borgias  and  the  Medici.  It  was  with  Italian  versatility  that 
he  turned  from  the  camp  to  the  counting-house  ;  he  was  cer- 
tainly engaged  as  a  commercial  agent  to  one  of  the  Venetian 
merchants;  tradition  finds  him  as  a  clerk  at  Antwerp  ;  ami 


422  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

in  1512  history  at  last  encounters  him  as  a  thriving  wool 
merchant  at  Middleburg  in  Zealand.  Returning  to  England, 
Cromwell  continued  to  amass  wealth  by  adding  the  trade  of 
scrivener,  something  between  that  of  a  banker  and  attorney, 
to  his  other  occupations,  as  well  as  by  advancing  money  to 
the  poorer  nobles  ;  and  on  the  outbreak  of  the  second  war 
with  France  we  find  him  a  busy  and  influential  member  of 
the  Commons  in  Parliament.  Five  years  later  the  aim  of  his 
ambition  was  declared  by  his  entrance  into  Wolsey's  service. 
The  Cardinal  needed  a  man  of  business  for  the  suppression  of 
some  smaller  monasteries  which  he  had  undertaken,  and  for 
the  transfer  of  their  revenues  to  his  foundations  at  Oxford 
and  Ipswich.  The  task  was  an  unpopular  one,  and  it  was 
carried  out  with  a  rough  indifference  to  the  feelings  it  aroused 
which  involved  Cromwell  in  the  hate  which  was  gathering 
round  his  master.  But  his  wonderful  self-reliance  and  sense 
of  power  only  broke  upon  the  world  at  Wolsey's  fall.  Of  the 
hundreds  of  dependents  who  waited  on  the  Cardinal's  nod, 
Cromwell  was  the  only  one  who  clung  to  him  faithfully  at  the 
last.  In  the  lonely  hours  of  his  disgrace  at  Esher  Woisey 
"  made  his  moan  unto  Master  Cromwell,  who  comforted  him 
the  best  he  could,  and  desired  my  lord  to  give  him  leave  to 
go  to  London,  where  he  would  make  or  mar,  which  was 
always  his  common  saying."  He  showed  his  consummate 
craft  in  a  scheme  by  which  Woisey  was  persuaded  to  buy  off 
the  hostility  of  the  courtiers  by  confirming  the  grants  which 
had  been  made  to  them  from  his  revenues,  while  Cromwell 
acquired  importance  as  a  go-between  in  these  transactions. 
It  was  by  Cromwell's  efforts  in  Parliament  that  a  bill  dis- 
qualifying Woisey  from  all  after  employment  was  defeated, 
and  it  was  by  him  that  the  negotiations  were  conducted  which 
permitted  the  fallen  minister  to  retire  to  York.  A  general 
esteem  seems  to  have  rewarded  this  rare  instance  of  fidelity 
to  a  ruined  patron.  "For  his  honest  behavior  in  his  master's 
cause  he  was  esteemed  the  most  faithfullest  servant,  and  was 
of  all  men  greatly  commended."  But  Henry's  protection 
rested  on  other  grounds.  The  ride  to  London  had  ended  in 
a  private  interview  with  the  king,  in  which  Cromwell  boldly 
advised  him  to  cut  the  knot  of  the  divorce  by  the  simple  ex- 
ercise of  his  own-  supremacy.  The  advice  struck  the  keynote 
of  the  later  policy  by  which  the  daring  councilor  was  to 


THOMAS   CROMWELL.      1530   TO   1540.  423 

change  the  whole  face  of  Church  and  State  ;  but  Henry  still 
clung  to  the  hopes  held  out  by  his  new  ministers,  and  shrank 
perhaps  as  yet  from  the  bare  absolutism  to  which  Cromwell 
called  him.  The  advice  at  any  rate  was  concealed,  and 
though  high  in  the  king's  favor,  his  new  servant  waited  pa- 
tiently the  progress  of  events. 

For  success  in  procuring  the  divorce,  the  Duke  of  Norfolk, 
who  had  come  to  the  front  on  Wolsey's  fall,  relied  not  only 
on  the  alliance  and  aid  of  the  Emperor,  but  on 
the  support  which  the  project  was  expected  to  re- 
ceive  from  Parliament.  The  reassembling  of  the 
two  Houses  marked  the  close  of  the  system  of  Wolsey.  In- 
stead of  looking  on  Parliament  as  a  danger  the  monarchy  now 
felt  itself  strong  enough  to  use  it  as  a  tool ;  and  Henry  justly 
counted  on  warm  support  in  his  strife  with  Rome.  Not  less 
significant  was  the  attitude  of  the  men  of  the  New  Learning. 
To  them,  as  to  his  mere  political  adversaries,  the  Cardinal's 
fall  opened  a  prospect  of  better  things.  The  dream  of  More 
in  accepting  the  office  of  Chancellor,  if  we  may  judge  it  from 
the  acts  of  his  brief  ministry,  seems  to  have  been  that 
of  carrying  out  the  religious  reformation  which  had  been 
demanded  by  Colet  and  Erasmus,  while  checking  the  spirit 
of  revolt  against  the  unity  of  the  Church.  His  severities 
against  the  Protestants,  exaggerated  as  they  have  been  by 
polemic  rancor,  remain  the  one  stain  on  a  memory  that 
knows  no  other.  But  it  was  only  by  a  rigid  severance  of  the 
cause  of  reform  from  what  seemed  to  him  the  cause  of  revo- 
lution that  More  could  hope  for  a  successful  issue  to  the  proj- 
ects which  the  Council  laid  before  Parliament.  The  Petition 
of  the  Commons  sounded  like  an  echo  of  Colet's  famous  ad- 
dress to  the  Convocation.  It  attributed  the  growth  of  heresy 
not  more  to  "  frantic  and  seditions  books  published  in  the 
English  tongue  contrary  to  the  very  true  Catholic  and  Chris- 
tian faith*'  than  to  "  the  extreme  and  uncharitable  behavior 
of  divers  ordinaries."  It  remonstrated  against  the  legisla- 
tion of  the  clergy  in  Convocation  without  the  king's  assent 
or  that  of  his  subjects,  the  oppressive  procedure  of  the 
Church  Courts,  the  abuses  of  ecclesiastical  patronage,  and 
the  excessive  number  of  holydays.  Henry  referred  the  Peti- 
tion to  the  bishops,  but  they  could  devise  no  means  of 
redress,  and  the  ministry  persisted  in  pushing  through  the 


424  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Houses  their  bills  for  ecclesiastical  reform.  The  questions  of 
Convocation  and  the  bishops'  courts  were  adjourned  for 
further  consideration,  but  the  fees  of  the  courts  were  cur- 
tailed, the  clergy  restricted  from  lay  employments,  pluralities 
restrained,  and  residence  enforced.  In  spite  of  a  dogged 
opposition  from,  the  bishops  the  bills  received  the  assent  of 
the  House  of  Lords,  "  to  the  great  rejoicing  of  the  lay  people, 
and  the  great  displeasure  of  spiritual  persons."  The  im- 
portance of  the  new  measures  lay  really  in  the  action  of  Par- 
liament. They  were  an  explicit  announcement  that  church- 
reform  was  now  to  be  undertaken,  not  by  the  clergy,  but  by 
the  people  at  large.  On  the  other  hand  it  was  clear  that  it 
would  be  carried  out,  not  in  a  spirit  of  hostility,  but  of 
loyalty  to  the  church.  The  Commons  forced  from  Bishop 
Fisher  an  apology  for  words  which  were  taken  as  a  doubt 
thrown  on  their  orthodoxy.  Henry  forbade  the  circulation 
of  Tyndale's  translation  of  the  Bible  as  executed  in  a  Prot- 
estant spirit,  while  he  promised  a  more  correct  version. 
But  the  domestic  aims  of  the  New  Learning  were  foiled  by 
the  failure  of  the  ministry  in  its  negotiations  for  the  divorce. 
The  severance  of  the  French  alliance,  and  the  accession  of 
the  party  to  power  which  clung  to  alliance  with  the  Emperor, 
failed  to  detach  Charles  from  his  aunt's  cause.  The  min- 
isters accepted  the  suggestion  of  a  Cambridge  scholar,  Thomas 
Cranmer,  that  the  universities  of  Europe  should  be  called  on 
for  their  judgment  ;  but  the  appeal  to  the  learned  opinion 
of  Christendom  ended  in  utter  defeat.  In  France  the  pro- 
fuse bribery  of  the  English  agents  would  have  failed  with  the 
university  of  Paris  but  for  the  interference  of  Francis  him- 
self. As  shameless  an  exercise  of  Henry's  own  authority  was 
required  to  wring  an  approval  of  his  cause  from  Oxford  and 
Cambridge.  In  Germany  the  very  Protestants,  in  the  fervor 
of  their  moral  revival,  were  dead  against  the  king.  So  far 
as  could  be  seen  from  Cranmer's  test  every  learned  man 
in  Christendom  but  for  bribery  and  threats  would  have 
condemned  Henry's  cause. 

It  was  at  the  moment  when  every  expedient  had  been  ex- 
hausted by  Norfolk  and  his  fellow  ministers  that  Cromwell 
Cromwell    came  again  to  the  front.     Despair  of  other  means 
and  the     drove  Henry  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  bold  plan 
Church,     from  wnich    he  had    shrunk    at  Wolsey's    fall. 


THOMAS   CROMWELL.      1530   TO   1540.  425 

Cromwell  was  again  ready  with  his  suggestion  that  the  king 
should  disavow  the  Papal  jurisdiction,  declare  himself  Head 
of  the  Church  within  his  realm,  and  obtain  a  divorce  from 
his  own  Ecclesiastical  Courts.  But  with  Cromwell  the 
divorce  was  but  the  prelude  to  a  series  of  changes  he  was  bent 
upon  accomplishing.  In  all  the  checkered  life  of  the  new 
minister  what  had  left  its  deepest  stamp  on  him  was  Italy. 
Not  only  in  the  rapidity  and  ruthlessness  of  his  designs,  but 
in  their  larger  scope,  their  clearer  purpose,  and  their  admi- 
rable combination,  the  Italian  state-craft  entered  with  Crom- 
well into  English  politics.  He  is  in  fact  the  first  English 
minister  in  whom  we  can  trace  through  the  whole  period  of 
his  rule  the  steady  working  out  of  a  great  and  definite  aim. 
His  purpose  was  to  raise  the  king  to  absolute  authority  on 
the  ruins  of  every  rival  power  within  the  realm.  It  was  not 
that  Cromwell  was  a  mere  slave  of  tyranny.  Whether  we 
may  trust  the  tale  that  carries  him  in  his  youth  to  Florence 
or  no,  his  statesmanship  was  closely  modeled  on  the  ideal  of 
the  Florentine  thinker  whose  book  was  constantly  in  his 
hand.  Even  as  a  servant  of  Wolsey  he  startled  the  future 
Cardinal,  Reginald  Pole,  by  bidding  him  take  for  his  manual 
in  politics  the  "Prince"  of  Machiavelli.  Machiavelli  hoped 
to  find  in  Caesar  Borgia  or  in  the  later  Lorenzo  de'  Medici  a 
tyrant  who  after  crushing  all  rival  tyrannies  might  unite  and 
regenerate  Italy ;  and  it  is  possible  to  see  in  the  policy  of 
Cromwell  the  aim  of  securing  enlightenment  and  order  for 
England  by  the  concentration  of  all  authority  in  the  Crown. 
The  last  check  on  royal  absolutism  which  had  survived  the 
"Wars  of  the  Roses  lay  in  the  wealth,  the  independent  synods 
and  jurisdiction,  and  the  religious  claims  of  the  Church.  To 
reduce  the  great  ecclesiastical  body  to  a  mere  department  of 
the  State  in  which  all  authority  should  flow  from  the  sovereign 
alone,  and  in  which  his  will  should  be  the  only  law,  his  decision 
the  only  test  of  truth,  was  a  change  hardly  to  be  wrought 
without  a  struggle ;  and  it  was  the  opportunity  for  such  a 
struggle  that  Cromwell  saw  in  the  divorce.  His  first  blow 
showed  how  unscrupulously  the  struggle  was  to  be  waged. 
A  year  had  passed  since  Wolsey  had  been  convicted  of  a 
breach  of  the  Statute  of  PraBmunire.  The  pedantry  of  the 
judges  declared  the  whole  nation  to  have  been  formally  in- 
volved in  the  same  charge  by  its  acceptance  of  his  authority. 


426  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

The  legal  absurdity  was  now  redressed  by  a  general  pardon, 
but  from  this  pardon  the  clergy  found  themselves  omitted. 
They  were  told  that  forgiveness  could  be  bought  at  no  less  a 
price  than  the  payment  of  a  fine  amounting  to  a  million  of 
our  present  money,  and  the  acknowledgment  of  the  king 
as  "  the  chief  protector,  the  only  and  supreme  lord,  the 
Head  of  the  Church  and  Clergy  of  England."  To  the  first 
demand  they  at  once  submitted  ;  against  the  second  they 
struggled  hard,  but  their  appeals  to  Henry  and  to  Cromwell 
met  only  with  demands  for  instant  obedience.  A  com- 
promise was  at  last  arrived  at  by  the  insertion  of  a  qualifying 
phrase  "  So  far  as  the  law  of  Christ  will  allow  ;  "  and  with 
this  addition  the  words  were  again  submitted  by  Warham  to 
the  Convocation.  There  was  a  general  silence.  "  Whoever 
is  silent  seems  to  consent,"  said  the  Archbishop.  "  Then 
are  we  all  silent,"  replied  a  voice  from  among  the  crowd. 

There  is  no  ground  for  thinking  that  the  "  Headship  of 
the  Church "  which  Henry  claimed  in  this  submission  was 
The  Head-  more  than  a  warning  addressed  to  the  independent 
shtoofthe  spirit  of  the  ,  clergy,  or  that  it  bore  as  yet  the 
Church,  meaning  which  was  afterwards  attached  to  it. 
It  certainly  implied  no  independence  of  Eome  ;  but  it 
told  the  Pope  plainly  that  in  any  strife  that  might  come 
the  clergy  -were  in  the  king's  hand.  The  warning  was 
backed  by  the  demand  for  the  settlement  of  the  question 
addressed  to  Clement  on  the  part  of  the  Lords  and  some 
of  the  Commons.  "  The  cause  of  his  Majesty,"  the  Peers 
were  made  to  say,  "is  the  cause  of  each  of  ourselves."  If 
Clement  would  not  confirm  what  was  described  as  the  judg- 
ment of  the  Universities  in  favor  of  the  divorce  "our  con- 
dition will  not  be  wholly  irremediable.  Extreme  remedies 
are  ever  harsh  of  application  ;  but  he  that  is  sick  will  by  all 
means  be  rid  of  his  distemper."  The  banishment  of  Cath- 
arine from  the  king's  palace  gave  emphasis  to  the  demand. 
The  failure  of  a  second  embassy  to  the  Pope  left  Cromwell 
free  to  take  more  decisive  steps  in  the  course  on  which  he 
had  entered.  As  his  policy  developed  itself  More  withdrew 
from  the  post  of  Chancellor  ;  but  the  revolution  from  which 
he  shrank  was  an  inevitable  one.  From  the  reign  of  the 
Edwards  men  had  been  occupied  with  the  problem  of  recon- 
ciling the  spiritual  and  temporal  relations  of  the  realm.  Par- 


THOMAS  CKOMWELL.      1530   TO  1540.  427 

liament  from  the  first  became  the  organ  of  the  national  jeal- 
ousy whether  of  Papal  jurisdiction  without  the  kingdom  or  of 
the  separate  jurisdiction  of  the  clergy  within  it.  The  move- 
ment, long  arrested  by  religious  reaction  and  civil  war,  was 
reviving  under  the  new  sense  of  national  greatness  and 
national  unity,  when  it  was  suddenly  stimulated  by  the  ques- 
tion of  the  divorce,  and  by  the  submission  of  English  inter- 
ests to  a  foreign  Court.  With  such  a  spur  it  moved  forward 
quickly.  The  time  had  come  when  England  was  to  chiim 
for  herself  the  fulness  of  power,  ecclesiastical  as  well  as  tem- 
poral, within  her  bounds ;  and,  in  the  concentration  of  all 
authority  within  the  hands  of  the  sovereign  which  was  the 
political  characteristic  of  the  time,  to  claim  this  power  for 
the  nation  was  to  claim  it  for  the  king.  The  import  of  the 
headship  of  the  Church  was  brought  fully  out  in  one  of  the 
propositions  laid  before  the  Convocation  of  1532.  "The 
king's  majesty,"  runs  this  memorable  clause,  "  hath  as  well 
the  care  of  the  souls  of  his  subjects  as  their  bodies  ;  and  may 
by  the  law  of  God  by  his  Parliament  make  laws  touching  and 
concerning  as  well  the  one  as  the  other."  Under  strong 
pressure  Convocation  was  brought  to  pray  that  the  power  of 
independent  legislation  till  now  exercised  by  the  Church 
should  come  to  an  end.  Rome  was  dealt  with  in  the  same 
unsparing  fashion.  The  Parliament  forbade  by  statute  any 
further  appeals  to  the  Papal  Court ;  and  on  a  petition  from 
the  clergy  in  Convocation  the  Houses  granted  power  to  the 
king  to  suspend  the  payments  of  first-fruits,  or  the  year's 
revenue  which  each  bishop  paid  to  Rome  on  his  election  to  a 
see.  All  judicial,  all  financial  connection  with  the  Papacy 
was  broken  by  these  two  measures.  Cromwell  fell  back  on 
Wolsey's  policy.  The  hope  of  aid  from  Charles  was  aban- 
doned, and  by  a  new  league  with  France  he  sought  to  bring 
pressure  on  the  Papal  Court.  But  the  pressure  was  as  un- 
successful as  before.  Clement  threatened  the  king  with  ex- 
communication if  he  did  not  restore  Catharine  to  her  place 
as  queen  and  abstain  from  all  intercourse  with  Anne  Boleyn 
till  the  case  was  tried.  Henry  still  refused  to  submit  to  the 
judgment  of  any  court  outside  his  realm  ;  and  the  Pope 
dared  not  consent  to  a  trial  within  it.  Henry  at  last  closed 
the  long  debate  by  a  secret  union  with  Anne  Boleyn.  War- 
bam  was  dead,  and  Cranmer,  an  active  partisan  of  the  divorce, 


i28  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

was  named  to  the  see  of  Canterbury  ;  proceedings  were  at 
once  commenced  in  his  court ;  and  the  marriage  of  Catharine 
was  formally  declared  invalid  by  the  new  primate  at  Dun- 
stable.  A  week  later  Cranmer  set  on  the  brow  of  Anne 
Boleyn  the  crown  which  she  had  so  long  coveted. 

As  yet  the  real  character  of  Cromwell's  ecclesiastical  policy 
had  been  disguised  by  its  connection  with  the  divorce.     But 

though  formal   negotiations  continued   between 
Suiwemacy   England  and  Rome,  until  Clement's  final  decision 

in  Catharine's  favor,  they  had  no  longer  any 
influence  on  the  series  of  measures  which  in  their  rapid  suc- 
cession changed  the  whole  character  of  the  English  Church. 
The  acknowledgment  of  Henry's  title  as  its  Protector  and 
Head  was  soon  found  by  the  clergy  to  have  been  more  than  a 
form  of  words.  It  was  the  first  step  in  a  policy  by  which  the 
Church  was  to  be  laid  prostrate  at  the  foot  of  the  throne. 
Parliament  had  shown  its  accordance  with  the  royal  will  in 
the  strife  with  Rome.  Step  by  step  the  ground  had  been 
cleared  for  the  great  Statute  by  which  the  new  character  of 
the  Church  was  defined.  The  Act  of  Supremacy  ordered 
that  the  king  "shall  be  taken,  accepted,  and  reputed  the 
only  supreme  head  on  earth  of  the  Church  of  England,  and 
shall  have  and  enjoy  annexed  and  united  to  the  Imperial 
Crown  of  this  realm  as  well  the  title  and  state  thereof  as  all 
the  honors,  jurisdictions,  authorities,  immunities,  profits  and 
commodities  to  the  said  dignity  belonging,  with  full  power 
to  visit,  repress,  redress,  reform,  and  amend  all  such  errors, 
heresies,  abuses,  contempts,  and  enormities,  which  by  any 
manner  of  spiritual  authority  or  jurisdiction  might  or  may 
lawfully  be  reformed."  Authority  in  all  matters  ecclesi- 
astical, as  well  as  civil,  was  vested  solely  in  the  Crown.  The 
"courts  spiritual"  became  as  thoroughly  the  king's  courts  as 
the  temporal  courts  at  Westminster.  But  the  full  import  of 
the  Act  of  Supremacy  was  only  seen  in  the  following  year, 
when  Henry  formally  took  the  title  o"  "on  earth  Supreme 
Head  of  the  Church  of  England/'  and  some  months  later 
Cromwell  was  raised  to  the  post  of  Vicar-General  or  Vice- 
gerent of  the  King  in  all  matters  ecclesiastical.  His  title, 
like  his  office,  recalled  the  system  of  Wolsey ;  but  the  fact 
that  these  powers  were  now  united  in  the  hands  not  of  a  priest 
but- of  a  layman,  showed  the  uew  drift  of  the  royal  policy. 


THOMAS   CROMWELL.      1530   TO   1540.  429 

And  this  policy  Cromwell's  position  enabled  him  to  carry  out 
with  a  terrible  thoroughness.  One  great  step  towards  its 
realization  had  already  been  taken  in  the  statute  which  anni- 
hilated the  free  legislative  powers  of  the  convocations  of  the 
clergy.  Another  followed  in  an  Act  which  under  the  pretext 
of  restoring  the  free  election  of  bishops  turned  every  prelate 
into  a  nominee  of  the  king.  Their  election  by  the  chapters 
of  their  cathedral  churches  had  long  become  formal,  and  their 
appointment  had  since  the  time  of  the  Edwards  been  practi- 
cally made  by  the  Papacy  on  the  nomination  of  the  Crown. 
The  privilege  of  free  election  was  now  with  bitter  irony 
restored  to  the  chapters,  but  they  were  compelled  on  pain  of 
praemunire  to  choose  the  candidate  recommended  by  the  king. 
This  strange  expedient  has  lasted  till  the  present  time  ;  but 
its  character  has  wholly  changed  with  the  development  of 
constitutional  rule.  The  nomination  of  bishops  has  ever 
since  the  accession  of  the  Georges  passed  from  the  king  in 
person  to  the  Minister  who  represents  the  will  of  the  people. 
Practically  therefore  an  English  prelate,  alone  among  all  the 
prelates  of  the  world,  is  now  raised  to  his  episcopal  throne  by 
the  same  popular  election  which  raised  Ambrose  to  his 
episcopal  chair  at  Milan.  But  at  the  moment  Cromwell's 
measure  reduced  the  English  bishops  to  absolute  dependence 
on  the  Crown.  Their  dependence  would  have  been  complete 
had  his  policy  been  thoroughly  carried  out  and  the  royal 
power  of  deposition  put  in  force  as  well  as  that  of  appoint- 
ment. As  it  was  Henry  could  warn  the  Archbishop  of  Dublin 
that  if  he  persevered  in  his  "  proud  folly,  we  be  able  to 
remove  you  again  and  to  put  another  man  of  more  virtue  and 
honesty  in  your  place."  Even  Elizabeth  in  a  burst  of  ill- 
humor  threatened  to  "unfrock "  the  Bishop  of  Ely.  By 
the  more  ardent  partizans  of  the  Reformation  this  dependence 
of  the  bishops  on  the  Crown  was  fully  recognized.  On  the 
death  of  Henry  the  Eighth  Cranmer  took  out  a  new  com- 
mission from  Ed  ward  for  the  exercise  of  his  office.  Latimer, 
when  the  royal  policy  clashed  with  his  belief,  felt  bound  to 
resign  the  See  of  Worcester.  That  the  power  of  deposition 
was  at  a  later  time  quietly  abandoned  was  due  not  so  much 
to  any  deference  for  the  religions  instincts  of  the  nation  as  to 
the  fact  that  the  steady  servility  of  the  bishops  rendered  its 
exercise  unnecessary. 


430  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Master  of  Convocation,  absolute  master  of  the  bishops, 
Henry  had  beoome  master  of  the  monastic  orders  through 

The  D's-  ^e  ri&ht  °^  visitation  over  them  which  had  been 
solution  of  transferred  by  the  Act  of  Supremacy  from  the 
the  Monas-  Papacy  to  the  Crown.  The  religious  houses  had 

teries.  (jrawn  on  themselves  at  once  the  hatred  of  the 
New  Learning  and  of  the  Monarchy.  In  the  early  days  of 
the  revival  of  letters  popes  and  bishops  had  joined  with 
princes  and  scholars  in  welcoming  the  diffusion  of  culture 
and  the  hopes  of  religious  reform.  But  though  an  abbot  or 
a  prior  here  or  there  might  be  found  among  the  supporters 
of  the  movement,  the  monastic  orders  as  a  whole  repelled  it 
with  unswerving  obstinacy.  The  quarrel  only  became  more 
bitter  as  years  went  on.  The  keen  sarcasms  of  Erasmus,  the 
insolent  buffoonery  of  Hutten,  were  lavished  on  the  "  lovers 
of  darkness"  and  of  the  cloister.  In  England  Colet  and 
More  echoed  with  greater  reserve  the  scorn  and  invective  of 
their  friends.  As  an  outlet  for  religious  enthusiasm,  indeed, 
monasticism  was  practically  dead.  The  friar,  now  that  his 
fervor  of  devotion  and  his  intellectual  energy  had  passed 
away,  had  sunk  into  a  mere  beggar.  The  monks  had  become 
mere  landowners.  Most  of  their  houses  were  anxious  only  to 
enlarge  their  revenues  and  to  diminish  the  number  of  those 
who  shared  them.  In  the  general  carelessness  which  pre- 
vailed as  to  the  spiritual  objects  of  their  trust,  in  the  wasteful 
management  of  their  estates,  in  the  indolence  and  self-indul- 
gence which  for  the  most  part  characterized  them,  the 
monastic  houses  simply  exhibited  the  faults  of  all  corporate 
bodies  which  have  outlived  the  work  which  they  were  created 
to  perform.  But  they  were  no  more  unpopular  than  such 
corporate  bodies  generally  are.  The  Lollard  cry  for  their 
suppression  had  died  away.  In  the  north,  where  some  of  the 
greatest  abbeys  were  situated,  the  monks  were  on  good  terms 
with  the  country  gentry,  and  their  houses  served  as  schools 
for  their  children  ;  nor  is  there  any  sign  of  a  different  feeling 
elsewhere.  But  in  Cromwell's  system  there  was  no  room  for 
either  the  virtues  or  the  vices  of  monasticism,  for  its  indo- 
lence and  superstition,  or  for  its  independence  of  the  throne. 
Two  royal  commissioners  therefore  were  despatched  on  a 
general  visitation  .of -the.  religious. houses,  and  their  reports 
formed  a  "Black  Book"  which  was  laid  before  Parliament 


THOMAS   CROMWELL.      1530   TO   1540.  431 

on  their  return.  It  was  acknowledged  that  about  a  third  of 
the  religious  houses,  including  the  bulk  of  the  larger  abbeys, 
were  fairly  and  decently  conducted.  The  rest  were  charged 
with  drunkenness,  with  simony,  and  with  the  foulest  and 
most  revolting  crimes.  The  character  of  the  visitors,  the 
sweeping  nature  of  their  report,  and  the  long  debate  which 
followed  on  its  reception,  leaves  little  doubt  that  the  charges 
were  grossly  exaggerated.  But  the  want  of  any  effective 
discipline  which  had  resulted  from  their  exemption  from  any 
but  Papal  supervision  told  fatally  against  monastic  morality 
even  in  abbeys  like  St.  Albans'  :  and  the  acknowledgment, 
of  Warham,  as  well  as  the  partial  measures  of  suppression 
begun  by  Wolsey,  go  far  to  prove  that  in  the  smaller  houses 
at  least  indolence  had  passed  into  crime.  But  in  spite  of  the 
cry  of  "  Down  with  them"  which  broke  from  the  Commons 
as  the  report  was  read,  the  country  was  still  far  from  desiring 
the  utter  downfall  of  the  monastic  system.  A  long  and  bitter 
debate  was  followed  by  a  compromise  which  suppressed  all 
houses  whose  incomes  fell  below  £200  a  year,  and  granted 
their  revenues  to  the  Crown  ;  but  the  great  abbeys  were  still 
preserved  intact. 

The  secular  clergy  alone  remained  ;  and  injunction  after 
injunction  from  the  Vicar-General  taught  rector  and  vicar 
that  they  must  learn  to  regard  themselves  as  mere  Enslave- 
mouthpieces  of  the  royal  will.  With  the  instinct  mentofthe 
of  genius  Cromwell  discerned  the  part  which  the  Cler87- 
pulpit,  as  the  one  means  which  then  existed  of  speaking  to 
the  people  at  large,  was  to  play  in  the  religious  and  political 
struggle  that  was  at  hand  ;  and  he  resolved  to  turn  it  to  the 
profit  of  the  Monarchy.  The  restriction  of  the  right  of  preach- 
ing to  priests  who  received  licenses  from  the  Crown  silenced 
every  voice  of  opposition.  Even  to  those  who  received  these 
licenses  theological  controversy  was  forbidden  ;  and  a  high- 
handed process  of  "  tuning  the  pulpits  "  by  directions  as  to 
the  subject  and  tenor  of  each  special  discourse  made  the 
preachers  at  every  crisis  mere  means  of  diffusing  the  royal 
will.  As  a  first  step  in  this  process  every  bishop,  abbot,  and 
parish  priest,  was  required  to  preach  against  the  usurpation 
of  the  Papacy,  and  to  proclaim  the  king  as  the  supreme 
Head  of  the  Church  on  earth.  The  very  topics  of  the  sermon 
wqre  carefully  prescribed  ;  the  bishops  were  held  responsible 


432  HISTORY   OP   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

for  the  compliance  of  the  clergy  with  these  orders,  and  the 
sheriffs  were  held  responsible  for  the  compliance  of  the 
bishops.  It  was  only  when  all  possibility  of  resistance  was  at 
an  end,  when  the  Church  was  gagged  and  its  pulpits  turned 
into  mere  echoes  of  Henry's  will,  that  Cromwell  ventured  on 
his  last  and  crowning  change,  that  of  claiming  for  the  Crown 
the  right  of  dictating  at  its  pleasure  the  form  of  faith  and 
doctrine  to  be  held  and  taught  throughout  the  land.  A  puri- 
fied Catholicism  such  as  Erasmus  and  Colet  had  dreamed  of 
was  now  to  be  the  religion  of  England.  But  the  dream  of  the 
New  Learning  was  to  be  wrought  out,  not  by  the  progress  of 
education  and  piety,  but  by  the  brute  force  of  the  Monarchy. 
The  Articles  of  Religion,  which  Convocation  received  and 
adopted  without  venturing  on  a  protest,  were  drawn  up  by 
the  hand  of  Henry  himself.  The  Bible  and  the  three  Creeds 
were  laid  down  as  the  sole  grounds  of  faith.  The  Sacraments 
were  reduced  from  seven  to  three,  only  Penance  being  allowed 
to  rank  on  an  equality  with  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper. 
The  doctrines  of  Transubstantiation  and  Confession  were 
maintained,  as  they  were  also  in  the  Lutheran  Churches. 
The  spirit  of  Erasmus  was  seen  in  the  acknowledgment  of 
Justification  by  Faith,  a  doctrine  for  which  the  friends  of 
the  New  Learning,  such  as  Pole  and  Contarini,  were  strug- 
gling at  Rome  itself,  in  the  condemnation  of  purgatory,  of 
pardons,  and  of  masses  for  the  dead,  in  the  admission  of 
prayers  for  the  dead,  and  in  the  retention  of  the  ceremonies 
of  the  Church  without  material  change.  Enormous  as  was 
the  doctrinal  revolution,  not  a  murmur  broke  the  assent  of 
Convocation,  and  the  Articles  were  sent  by  the  Vicar-General 
into  every  county  to  be  obeyed  at  men's  peril.  The  policy  of 
reform  was  carried  steadily  out  by  a  series  of  royal  injunctions 
which  followed.  Pilgrimages  were  suppressed  ;  the  excessive 
number  of  holy  days  diminished  ;  the  worship  of  images  and 
relics  discouraged  in  words  which  seem  almost  copied  from 
the  protest  of  Erasmus.  His  burning  appeal  for  a  translation 
of  the  Bible  which  weavers  might  repeat  at  their  shuttle  and 
plowmen  sing  at  their  plow  received  at  last  a  reply.  At 
the  outset  of  the  ministry  of  Norfolk  and  More  the  king  had 
promised  an  English  version  of  the  scriptures,  while  pro- 
hibiting the  circulation  of  Tyndale's  Lutheran  translation. 
The  work  however  lagged  in  the  hands  of  the  bishops  j  and 


THOMAS   CltOMWKLL.      1530   TO   1540.  433 

as  a  preliminary  measure  the  Creed,  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and 
the  Ten  Commandments  were  now  rendered  into  English, 
and  ordered  to  be  taught  by  every  schoolmaster  and  father 
of  a  family  to  his  children  and  pupils.  But  the  bishop's 
version  still  hung  on  hand  ;  till  in  despair  of  its  appearance 
a  friend  of  Archbishop  Cranmer,  Miles  Coverdale,  was  em- 
ployed to  correct  and  revise  the  translation  of  Tyndale  ;  and 
the  Bible  which  he  edited  was  published  in  1538  under  the 
avowed  patronage  of  Henry  himself.  The  story  of  the  royal 
supremacy  was  graven  on  its  very  title-page.  The  new 
foundation  of  religious  truth  was  to  be  regarded  throughout 
England  as  a  gift,  not  from  the  Church,  but  from  the  king. 
It  is  Henry  on  his  throne  who  gives  the  sacred  volume  to 
Cranmer,  ere  Cranmer  and  Cromwell  can  distribute  it  to  the 
throng  of  priests  and  laymen  below. 

The  debate  on  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries  was  the 
first  instance  of  opposition  with  which  Cromwell  had  met, 
and  for  some  time  longer  it  was  to  remain  the  only 
one.  While  the  great  revolution  which  struck  down  The  Terror, 
the  Church  was  in  progress, England  looked  silently 
on.  In  all  the  earlier  ecclesiastical  changes,  in  the  contest  over 
the  Pupal  jurisdiction  and  Papal  exactions,  in  the  reform  of  the 
Church  courts,  even  in  the  curtailment  of  the  legislative  inde- 
pendence of  the  clergy,  the  nation  as  a  whole  had  gone  with  the 
king.  But  from  the  enslavement  of  the  clergy,  from  the 
gagging  of  the  pulpits,  from  the  suppression  of  the  mon- 
asteries, the  bulk  of  the  nation  stood  aloof.  It  is  only  through 
the  stray  depositions  of  royal  spies  that  we  catch  a  glimpse  of 
the  wrath  and  hate  which  lay  seething  under  this  silence  of 
a  whole  people.  For  the  silence  was  a  silence  of  terror.  Be- 
fore Cromwell's  rise  and  after  his  fall  from  power  the  reign 
of  Henry  the  Eighth  witnessed  no  more  than  the  common 
tyranny  and  bloodshed  of  the  time.  Bat  the  years  of  Crom- 
well's administration  form  the  one  period  in  our  history  which 
deserves  the  name  which  men  have  given  to  the  rule  of 
Robespierre.  It  was  the  English  Terror.  It  was  by  terror  that 
Cromwell  mastered  the  king.  Cranmer  could  plead  for  him 
at  a  later  time  with  Henry  as  "one  whose  surety  was  only  by 
your  Majesty,  who  loved  your  Majesty,  as  I  ever  thought,  no 
less  than  God."  But  the  attitude  of  Cromwell  towards  the 
king  was  something  more  than  that  of  absolute  dependence 
' 


434  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

and  unquestioning  devotion.  He  was  "'so  vigilant  to  pre- 
serve your  Majesty  from  all  treasons,"  adds  the  Primate, 
"  that  few  could  be  so  secretly  conceived  but  he  detected  the 
same  from  the  beginning."  Henry,  like  every  Tudor,  was 
fearless  of  open  danger,  but  tremulously  sensitive  to  the 
slightest  breath  of  hidden  disloyalty.  It  was  on  this  inner 
dread  that  Cromwell  based  the  fabric  of  his  power.  He  was 
hardly  secretary  before  a  host  of  spies  were  scattered  broad- 
cast over  the  land.  Secret  denunciations  poured  into  the 
open  ear  of  the  minister.  The  air  was  thick  with  tales  of 
plots  and  conspiracies,  and  with  the  detection  and  suppres- 
sion of  each  Cromwell  tightened  his  hold  on  the  king.  And 
as  it  was  by  terror  that  he  mastered  the  king,  so  it  was  by 
terror  that  he  mastered  the  people.  Men  felt  in  England, 
to  use  the  figure  by  which  Erasmus  paints  the  time,  "  as  if  a 
scorpion  lay  sleeping  under  every  stone."  The  confessional 
had  no  secrets  for  Cromwell.  Men's  talk  with  their  closest 
friends  found  its  way  to  his  ear.  "  Words  idly  spoken,"  the 
murmurs  of  a  petulant  abbot,  the  ravings  of  a  moon-struck 
nun,  were,  as  the  nobles  cried  passionately  at  his  fall,  "tor- 
tured into  treason."  The  only  chance  of  safety  lay  in  silence. 
"  Friends  who  used  to  write  and  send  me  presents,"  Erasmus 
tells  us,  "  now  send  neither  letter  nor  gifts,  nor  receive  any 
from  any  one,  and  this  through  fear."  But  even  the  refuge 
of  silence  was  closed  by  a  law  more  infamous  than  any  that 
has  ever  blotted  the  Statute  book  of  England.  Not  only  was 
thought  made  treason,  but  men  were  forced  to  reveal  their 
thoughts  on  pain  of  their  very  silence  being  punished  with 
the  penalties  of  treason.  All  trust  in  the  older  bulwarks  of 
liberty  was  destroyed  by  a  policy  as  daring  as  it  was  unscru- 
pulous. The  noblest  institutions  were  degraded  into  instru- 
ments of  terror.  Though  Wolsey  had  strained  the  law.  to  the 
utmost  he  had  made  no  open  attack  on  the  freedom  of  justice. 
If  he  had  shrunk  from  assembling  Parliaments  it  was  from 
his  sense  that  they  were  the  bulwarks  of  liberty.  Under 
Cromwell  the  coercion  of  juries  and  the  management  of 
judges  rendered  the  courts  mere  mouth-pieces  of  the  royal 
will :  and  where  even  this  shadow  of  justice  proved  an  ob- 
stacle to  bloodshed,  Parliament  was  brought  into  play  to  pass 
.bill  after  bill  of  attainder.  "He  shall  be  judged  by  the 
bloody  laws  he  has  himself  made,"  was  the  cry  of  the 


THOMAS   CROMWELL.      1530   TO   1540.  435 

Council  at  the  moment  of  his  fall,  and  by  a  singular  retribu- 
tion the  crowning  injustice  which  he  sought  to  introduce 
even  into  the  practise  of  attainder,  the  condemnation  of  a 
man  without  hearing  his  defense,  was  only  practised  on  him- 
self. But  ruthless  as  was  the  Terror  of  Cromwell  it  was  of  a 
nobler  type  than  the  Terror  of  France.  He  never  struck 
uselessly  or  capriciously,  or  stooped  to  the  meaner  victims  of 
the  guillotine.  His  blows  were  effective  just  because  he  chose 
his  victims  from  among  the  noblest  and  the  best.  If  he 
struck  at  the  Church,  it  was  through  the  Carthusians,  the 
holiest  and  the  most  renowned  of  English  churchmen.  If 
he  struck  at  the  baronage,  it  was  through  the  Courtenays  and 
the  Poles,  in  whose  veins  flowed  the  blood  of  kings.  If  he 
struck  at  the  New  Learning  it  was  through  the  murder  of  Sir 
Thomas  More.  But  no  personal  vindictiveness  mingled  with 
his  crime.  In  temper,  indeed,  so  far  as  we  can  judge  from 
the  few  stories  which  lingered  among  his  friends,  he  was  a 
generous,  kindly-hearted  man,  with  pleasant  and  winning 
manners  which  atoned  for  a  certain  awkwardness  of  person, 
and  with  a  constancy  of  friendship  which  won  him  a  host 
of  devoted  adherents.  But  no  touch  either  of  love  or  hate 
swayed  him  from  his  course.  The  student  of  Machiavelli 
had  not  studied  the  "  Prince "  in  vain.  He  had  reduced 
bloodshed  to  a  system.  Fragments  of  his  papers  still  show 
us  with  what  a  business-like  brevity  he  ticked  off  human 
lives  among  the  casual  "  remembrances  "  of  the  day.  "  Item, 
the  Abbot  of  Reading  to  be  sent  down  to  be  tried  and  exe- 
cuted at  Reading."  "Item,  to  know  the  king's  pleasure 
touching  Master  More."  "Item,  when  Master  Fisher  shall 
go  to  his  execution,  and  the  other."  It  is  indeed  this  utter 
absence  of  all  passion,  of  all  personal  feeling,  that  makes  the 
figure  of  Cromwell  the  most  terrible  incur  history.  He  has 
an  absolute  faith  in  the  end  he  is  pursuing,  and  he  simply 
hews  his  way  to  it  as  a  woodman  hews  his  way  through  the 
forest,  ax  in  hand. 

The  choice  of  his  first  victim  showed  the  ruthless  precision 
with  which  Cromwell  was  to  strike.  In  the  general  opinion 
of  Europe  the  foremost  Englishman  of  his  time  was 
Sir  Thomas  More.  As  the  policy  of  the  divorce 
ended  in  an  open  rupture  with  Rome  he  had  with- 
drawn silently  from  the  ministry,but  his  silent  disapproval  was 


436  HISTORY   OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

more  telling  than  the  opposition  of  obscurer  foes.  To  Cromwell 
there  must  have  been  something  specially  galling  in  Moro's 
attitude  of  reserve.  The  religious  reforms  of  the  New  Learning 
were  being  rapidly  carried  out,  but  it  was  plain  that  the  man 
who  represented  the  very  life  of  the  New  Learning  believed 
that  the  sacrifice  of  liberty  and  justice  was  too  dear  a  price  to 
pay  even  for  religious  reform.  More  indeed  looked  on  the  di- 
vorce and  re-marriage  as  without  religious  warrant,  though  his 
faith  in  the  power  of  Parliament  to  regulate  the  succession  made 
him  regard  the  children  of  Anne  Boleyn  as  the  legal  heirs  of 
the  Crown.  The  Act  of  Succession,  however,  required  an  oath 
to  be  taken  by  all  persons,  which  not  only  recognized  the 
succession,  but  contained  an  acknowledgment  that  the  mar- 
riage with  Catharine  was  against  Scripture  and  invalid  from 
the  beginning.  Henry  had  long  known  More's  belief  on  this 
point ;  and  the  summons  to  take  this  oath  was  simply  a  sum- 
mons to  death.  More  was  at  his  house  at  Chelsea  when  the 
summons  called  him  to  Lambeth,  to  the  house  where  he  had 
bandied  fun  with  Warham  and  Erasmus  or  bent  over  the 
easel  of  Holbein.  For  a  moment  there  may  have  been  some 
passing  impulse  to  yield.  But  it  was  soon  over.  "  I  thank 
the  Lord,"  More  said  with  a  sudden  start  as  the  boat  dropped 
silently  down  the  river  from  his  garden  steps  in  the  early 
morning,  "  I  thank  the  Lord  that  the  field  is  won/'  Cran- 
mer  and  his  fellow  commissioners  tendered  to  him  the  new 
oath  of  allegiance  ;  but,  as  they  expected,  it  was  refused. 
They  bade  him  walk  in  the  garden  that  he  might  reconsider 
his  reply.  The  day  was  hot  and  More  seated  himself  in  a 
window  from  which  he  could  look  down  into  the  crowded 
court.  Even  in  the  presence  of  death,  the  quick  sympathy 
of  his  nature  could  enjoy  the  humor  and  life  of  the  throng 
below.  "  I  saw,"  he  said  afterwards,  "  Master  Latimer  very 
merry  in  the  court,  for  he  laughed  and  took  one  or  twain  by 
the  neck  so  handsomely  that  if  they  had  been  women  I  should 
have  weened  that  he  waxed  wanton."  The  crowd  below  was 
chiefly  of  priests,  rectors  and  vicars,  pressing  to  take 
the  oath  that  More  found  harder  than  death.  He  bore 
them  no  grudge  for  it.  When  he  heard  the  voice  of  one  who 
was  known  to  have  boggled  hard  at  the  oath  a  little  while 
before  calling  loudly  and  ostentatiously  for  drink,  he  only 
noted  him  with  his  peculiar  humor.  ' '  He  drank,"  More  sup- 


THOMAS   CROMWELL.      1530   TO   1540.  437 

posed,  "  either  from  dry  ness  or  from  gladness,"  or  "  to  show 
quod  ille  notus  erat  Pontifici."  He  was  called  in  again  at 
last,  but  only  repeated  his  refusal.  It  was  in  vain  thatCruii- 
mer  plied  him  with  distinctions  which  perplexed  even  the 
subtle  wit  of  the  ex-chancellor  ;  he  remained  unsnaken  and 
passed  to  the  Tower.  He  was  followed  there  by  Bishop  Fisher 
of  Rochester,  charged  with  countenancing  treason  by  listen- 
ing to  the  prophecies  of  a  fanatic  called  the  "  Nun  of  Kent." 
For  the  moment  even  Cromwell  shrank  from  their  blood. 
They  remained  prisoners  while  a  new  and  more  terrible  engine 
was  devised  to  crush  out  the  silent  but  widespread  opposition 
to  the  religious  changes.  By  a  statute  passed  at  the  close  of 
1534  a  new  treason  was  created  in  the  denial  of  the  king's 
titles  ;  and  in  the  opening  of  1535  Henry  assumed,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  title  of  '•'  on  earth  supreme  Head  of  the  Church 
of  England."  In  the  general  relaxation  of  the  religious  life 
the  charity  and  devotion  of  the  brethren  of  the  Charter-house 
had  won  the  reverence  even  of  those  who  condemned  monasti- 
cism.  After  a  stubborn  resistance  they  had  acknowledged 
the  royal  Supremacy,  and  taken  the  oath  of  submission  pre- 
scribed by  the  Act.  But  by  an  infamous  construction  of  the 
statute  which  made  the  denial  of  the  Supremacy  treason,  the 
refusal  of  satisfactory  answers  to  official  questions  as  to  a 
conscientious  belief  in  it  was  held  to  be  equivalent  to  open 
denial.  The  aim  of  the  new  measure  was  w-ell  known,  and 
the  brethren  prepared  to  die.  In  the  agony  of  waiting  en- 
thusiasm brought  its  imaginative  consolations  ;  "  when  the 
Host  was  lifted  up  there  came  as  it  were  a  whisper  of  air 
which  breathed  upon  our  faces  as  we  knelt ;  and  there  came 
a  sweet  aoft  sound  of  music."  They  had  not  long  however 
to  wait.  Their  refusal  to  answer  was  the  signal  for  their 
doom.  Three  of  the  brethren  went  to  the  gallows  ;  the  rest 
were  flung  into  Newgate,  chained  to  posts  in  a  noisome  dun- 
geon where,  '•  tied  and  not  able  to  stir,"  they  were  left  to 
perish  of  jail-fever  and  starvation.  In  a  fortnight  five  were 
dead  and  the  rest  at  the  point  of  death,  "  almost  despatched," 
Cromwell's  envoy  wrote  to  him,  ''by  the  hand  of  God,  of 
which,  considering  their  behavior,  I  am  not  sorry."  The 
interval  of  imprisonment  had  failed  to  break  the  resolution 
of  More,  and  the  new  statute  sufficed  to  bring  him  to  the 
block.  With  Fisher  he  was  convicted  of  denying  the  king's 


438  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

title  as  only  supreme  head  of  the  Church .,  The  old  Bishop 
approached  the  block  with  a  book  of  the  New  Testament  in 
his  hand.  He  opened  it  at  a  venture  ere  he  knelt,  and  read, 
"This  is  life  eternal  to  know  Thee,  the  only  true  God." 
Fisher's  death  was  soon  followed  by  that  of  More.  On  the 
eve  of  the  fatal  blow  he  moved  his  beard  carefully  from  the 
block.  "  Pity  that  should  be  cut,"  he  was  heard  to  mutter 
with  a  touch  of  the  old  sad  irony,  "  that  has  never  committed 
treason." 

But  it  required,  as  Cromwell  well  knew,  heavier  blows 
even  than  these  to  break  the  stubborn  resistance  of  English- 
Cromwell  men  t°  his  projects  of  change,  and  he  seized  his  op- 
and  the  portunity  in  the  revolt  of  the  North.  In  the  north 
Nobles,  the  monks  had  been  popular  ;  and  the  outrages 
with  which  the  dissolution  of  the  monasteries  was  accompa- 
nied gave  point  to  the  mutinous  feeling  that  prevailed  through 
the  country.  The  nobles  too  were  writhing  beneath  the  rule 
of  one  whom  they  looked  upon  as  a  low-born  upstart.  "  The 
world  will  never  mend,"  Lord  Hussey  was  heard  to  say,  "till 
we  fight  for  it."  Agrarian  discontent  and  the  love  of  the  old 
religion  united  in  a  revolt  which  broke  out  in  Lincolnshire. 
The  rising  was  hardly  suppressed  when  Yorkshire  was  in 
arms.  From  every  parish  the  farmers  marched  with  the 
parish  priest  at  their  head  upon  York,  and  the  surrender  of 
the  city  determined  the  waverers.  In  a  few  days  Skipton 
Castle,  where  the  Earl  of  Cumberland  held  out  with  a  hand- 
ful of  men,  was  the  only  spot  north  df  the  Humber  which 
remained  true  to  the  king.  Durham  rose  at  the  call  of  Lords 
Latimer  and  Westmoreland.  Though  the  Earl  of  North- 
umberland feigned  sickness,  the  Percies  joined  the  revolt. 
Lord  Dacre,  the  chief  of  the  Yorkshire  nobles,  surrendered 
Pomfret,  and  was  at  once  acknowledged  as  their  chief  by  the 
insurgents.  The  whole  nobility  of  the  north  were  now  in 
arms,  and  thirty  thousand,  "tall  men  and  well  horsed  "  moved 
on  the  Don,  demanding  the  reversal  of  the  royal  policy,  a  re- 
union with  Rome,  the  restoration  of  Catharine's  daughter, 
Mary,  to  her  rights  as  heiress  of  the  Crown,  redress  for  the 
wrongs  done  to  the  Church,  and  above  all  the  driving  away 
of  base-born  counselors,  in  other  words  the  fall  of  Cromwell. 
Though  their  advance  was  checked  by  negotiation,  the  organ- 
ization of  the  revolt  went  -steadily  on  throughout  the  winter, 


THOMAS   CROMWELL.      1530   TO   1540.  439 

and  a  Parliament  of  the  North  gathered  at  Pomfret,  and 
formally  adopted  the  demands  of  the  insurgents.  Only  six 
thousand  men  under  Norfolk  barred  their  way  southward, 
and  the  Midland  counties  were  known  to  be  disaffected. 
Cromwell,  however,  remained  undaunted  by  the  peril.  He 
suffered  Norfolk  to  negotiate  ;  and  allowed  Henry  under 
pressure  from  his  Council  to  promise  pardon  and  a  free  Parlia- 
ment at  York,  a  pledge  which  Norfolk  and  Dacre  alike  con- 
strued into  an  acceptance  of  the  demands  made  by  the  insur- 
gents. Their  leaders  at  once  flung  aside  the  badge  of  the 
Five  Wounds  which  thoy  had  worn,  with  a  cry  "  We  will 
wear  no  badge  but  that  of  our  Lord  the  King,"  and  nobles 
and  farmers  dispersed  to  their  homes  in  triumph.  But  the 
towns  of  the  North  were  no  sooner  garrisoned  and  Norfolk's 
army  in  the  heart  of  Yorkshire  than  the  veil  was  flung  aside. 
A  few  isolated  outbreaks  gave  a  pretext  for  the  withdrawal  of 
every  concession.  The  arrest  of  the  leaders  of  the  "  Pilgrim- 
age of  Grace,"  as  the  insurrection  was  styled,  was  followed 
by  ruthless  severities.  The  country  was  covered  with  gibbets. 
Whole  districts  were  given  up  to  military  execution.  But  it 
was  on  the  leaders  of  the  rising  that  Cromwell's  hand  fell 
heaviest.  He  seized  his  opportunity  for  dealing  at  the 
northern  nobles  a  fatal  blow.  "  Cromwell/'  one  of  the  chief 
among  them  broke  fiercely  out  as  he  stood  at  the  Council 
board,  "  it  is  thou  that  art  the  very  special  and  chief  cause  of 
all  this  rebellion  and  wickedness,  and  dost  daily  travail  to 
bring  us  to  our  ends  and  strike  off  our  heads.  I  trust  that 
ere  thou  die,  though  thou  wouldst  procure  all  the  noblest 
heads  within  the  realm  to  be  stricken  off,  yet  there  shall  one 
head  remain  that  shall  strike  off  thy  head."  But  the  warn- 
ing was  unheeded.  Lord  Darcy,  who  stood  first  among  the 
nobles  of  Yorkshire,  and  Lord  Hussey,  who  stood  first  among 
the  nobles  of  Lincolnshire,  went  alike  to  the  block.  The 
Abbot  of  Barlings,  who  had  ridden  into  Lincoln  with  his 
canons  in  full  armor,  swung  with  his  brother  Abbots  of 
Whalley,  Woburn,  and  Sawley  from  the  gallows.  The  Abbots 
of  Fountains  and  of  Jervaulx  were  hanged  at  Tyburn  side  by 
side  with  the  representative  of  the  great  line  of  Percy.  Lady 
Buhner  was  burnt  at  the  stake.  Sir  Robert  Constable  was 
hanged  in  chains  before  the  gate  of  Hull.  The  blow  to  the 
north  had  not  long  been  struck  when  Cromwell  turned  to 


440  HISTORY.    OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

deal  with  the  west.  The  opposition  to  his  system  gathered 
above  all  round  two  houses  who  represented  what  yet  lingered 
of  Yorkist  tradition,  the  Courtenays  and  the  Poles.  Mar- 
garet, the  Countess  of  Salisbury,  a  daughter  of  the  Duke  of 
Clarence  by  the  heiress  of  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  was  at  once 
representative  of  the  Nevilles  and  a  niece  of  Edward  the 
Fourth.  Her  third  son,  Keginald  Pole,  after  refusing  the 
highest  offers  from  Henry  as  the  price  of  his  approval  of 
the  divorce,  had  taken  refuge  in  Rome,  where  he  had  bitterly 
attacked  the  king  in  a  book  on  "  The  Unity  of  the  Church." 
"  There  may  be  found  ways  enough  in  Italy/'  Cromwell  wrote 
to  him  in  significant  words,  "  to  rid  a  treacherous  subject. 
When  Justice  can  take  no  place  by  process  of  law  at  home, 
sometimes  she  may  be  enforced  to  take  new  means  abroad." 
But  he  had  left  hostages  in  Henry's  hands.  "Pity  that  the 
folly  of  one  witless  fool  should  be  the  ruin  of  so  great  a  family. 
Let  him  follow  ambition  as  fast  as  he  can.  those  that  little 
have  offended  (saving  that  he  is  of  their  kin),  were  it  not  for 
the  great  mercy  and  benignity  of  the  prince,  should  and 
might  feel  what  it  is  to  have  a  traitor  as  their  kinsman."  Pole 
answered  by  pressing  the  Emperor  to  execute  a  bull  of  ex- 
communication and  deposition  which  was  now  launched  by 
the  Papacy.  Cromwell  was  quick  with  his  reply.  Court- 
enay,  the  Marquis  of  Exeter,  was  a  kinsman  of  the  Poles,  and 
like  them  of  royal  blood,  a  grandson  through  his  mother 
of  Edward  the  Fourth.  He  was  known  to  have  bitterly  de- 
nounced the' "  knaves  that  ruled  about  the  king;"  and  his 
threats  to  "give  them  some  day  a  buffet"  were  formidable  in 
the  mouth  of  one  whose  influence  in  the  western  counties  was 
supreme.  He  was  at  once  arrested  with  Lord  Montacute, 
Pole's  elder  brother,  on  a  charge  of  treason,  and  both  were 
beheaded  on  Tower  Hill,  while  the  Countess  of  Salisbury  was 
attainted  and  sent  to  the  Tower. 

Never  indeed  had  Cromwell  shown  such  greatness  as  in  his 
last  struggle  against  Fate.     "  Beknaved  "  by  the  king  whose 

confidence  in  him  waned  as  he  discerned  the  full 
^Cromwell'  meaning  °^  tne  religious  changes,  met  too  by  a 

growing  opposition  in  the  Council  as  his  favor 
declined,  the  temper  of  the  man  remained  indomitable  as 
ever.  He  stood  absolutely  alone.  Wolsey, -hated  as  he  had 
been  by  the  nobles,  had  been  supported  by  the  Church  ;  but 


THOMAS   CROMWELL.      1530   TO    1540.  441 

Churchmen  hated  Cromwell  with  an  even  fiercer  hate  than  the 
nobles  themselves.  His  only  friends  were  the  Protestants, 
and  their  friendship  was  more  fatal  than  the  hatred  of  his 
foes.  But  he  showed  no  signs  of  fear  or  of  halting  in  the 
course  he  had  entered  on.  His  activity  was  as  boundless  as 
ever.  Like  Wolsey  he  had  concentrated  in  his  hands  the 
whole  administration  of  the  state  ;  he  was  at  once  foreign 
minister  and  home  minister  and  Vicar-General  of  the  Church, 
the  creator  of  a  new  fleet,  the  organizer  of  armies,  the  presi- 
dent of  the  terrible  Star  Chamber.  But  his  Italian  indiffer- 
ence to  the  mere  show  of  power  contrasted  strongly  with  the 
pomp  of  the  Cardinal.  His  personal  habits  were  simple  and 
unostentatious.  If  he  clutched  at  money,  it  was  to  feed  the 
vast  army  of  spies  whom  he  maintained  at  his  own  expense, 
and  whose  work  ho  surveyed  with  a  sleepless  vigilance. 
More  than  fifty  volumes  still  remain  of  the  gigantic  mass  of 
his  correspondence.  Thousands  of  letters  from  "  poor  bedes- 
men/' from  outraged  wives  and  wronged  laborers  and  perse- 
cuted heretics,  flowed  in  to  the  all-powerful  minister  whose 
system  of  personal  government  had  turned  him  into  the 
universal  court  of  appeal.  So  long  as  Henry  supported  him, 
however  reluctantly,  he  was  more  than  a  match  for  his  foes. 
He  was  strong  enough  to  expel  his  chief  opponent,  Bishop 
Gardiner  of  Winchester,  from  the  royal  Council.  He  met 
the  hostility  of  the  nobles  with  a  threat  which  marked  his 
power.  "  If  the  lords  would  handle  him  so,  he  would  give 
them  snch  a  breakfast  as  never  was  made  in  England,  and 
that  the  proudest  of  them  should  know."  His  single  will 
forced  on  a  scheme  of  foreign  policy  whose  aim  was  to  bind 
England  to  the  cause  of  the  Reformation  while  it  bound  Henry 
helplessly  to  his  minister.  The  daring  boast  which  his  enemies 
laid  afterwards  to  his  charge,  whether  uttered  or  not,  is  but 
the  expression  of  his  system.  "  In  brief  time  he  would  bring 
things  to  such  a  pass  that  the  king  with  all  his  power  should 
not  be  able  to  hinder  him."  His  plans  rested,  like  the  plan 
which  proved  fatal  to  Wolsey,  on  a  fresh  marriage  of  hia 
master.  The  short-lived  royalty  of  Anne  Boleyn  had  ended 
in  charges  of  adultery  and  treason,  and  in  her  death  in  May, 
1530.  Her  rival  and  successor  in  Henry's  affections,  June 
Seymour,  died  next  year  in  childbirth  ;  and  Cromwell  replaced 
her  with  a  German  consort,  Anne  of  Cleves,  a  sister-in-law 


442  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  the  Lutheran  elector  of  Saxony.  He  dared  even  to  resist 
Henry's  caprice,  when  the  king  revolted  on  their  first  inter- 
view at  the  coarse  features  and  unwieldy  form  of  his  new 
bride.  For  the  moment  Cromwell  had  brought  matters  "  to 
such  a  pass  "  that  it  was  impossible  to  recoil  from  the  marriage. 
The  marriage  of  Anne  of  Cleves,  however,  was  but  the  first 
step  in  a  policy  which,  had  it  been  carried  out  as  he  designed 
it,  would  have  anticipated  the  triumphs  of  Eichelieu. 
Charles  and  the  House  'of  Austria  could  alone  bring  about  a 
Catholic  reaction  strong  enough  to  arrest  and  roll  back  the 
Beformation ;  and  Cromwell  was  no  sooner  united  with  the 
princes  of  North  Germany  than  he  sought  to  league  them 
with  France  for  the  overthrow  of  the  Emperor.  Had  he  suc- 
ceeded, the  whole  face  of  Europe  would  have  been  changed, 
Southern  Germany  would  have  been  secured  for  Protestant- 
ism, and  the  Thirty  Years  War  averted.  He  failed  as  men 
fail  who  stand  ahead  of  their  age.  The  German  princes 
shrank  from  a  contest  with  the  Emperor,  France '  from  a 
struggle  which  would  be  fatal  to  Catholicism  ;  and  Henry,  left 
alone  to  bear  the  resentment  of  the  House  of  Austria  and 
chained  to  a  wife  he  loathed,  turned  savagely  on  Cromwell. 
The  nobles  sprang  on  him  with  a  fierceness  that  told  of  their 
long-hoarded  hate.  Taunts  and  execrations  burst  from  the 
Lords  at  the  Council  table,  as  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  who  had 
been  charged  with  the  minister's  arrest,  tore  the  ensign  of  the 
Garter  from  his  neck.  At  the  charge  of  treason  Cromwell 
flung  his  cap  on  the  ground  with  a  passionate  cry  of  despair. 
"This  then,"  he  exclaimed,  "is  my  guerdon  for  the  services 
I  have  done  !  On  your  consciences,  I  ask  you,  am  I  a 
traitor  ?  "  Then  with  a  sudden  sense  that  all  was  over  he 
bade  his  foes  "  make  quick  work,  and  not  leave  me  to  lan- 
guish in  prison."  Quick  work  was  made,  and  a  jet  louder 
burst  of  popular  applause  than  that  which  hailed  the  at- 
tainder of  Cromwell  hailed  his  execution. 


THE  PROTESTANTS.      1540   TO   1553.  443 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  REFORMATION. 

Section  i.— The  Protestants.    1540—1553. 

[Authorities.— For  the  close  of  Henry's  reign  and  for  that  of  Edward,  we  have  a 
mass  of  material  in  Strype's  "  Memorials,"  and  his  lives  of  Cranmer,  Cheke,  and 
Smith,  in  Mr.  Pocock's  edition  of  "  Burnet's  History  of  the  Reformation,"  in  Hay- 
ward's  Life  of  Edward,  and  Edward's  own  Journal,  in  Holinshed's  "  Chronicle," 
and  Machyn's  "  Diary  "  (Cainden  Society).  For  the  Protectorate  see  the  corre- 
spondence published  by  Mr.  Tytler  in  his  "  England  under  Edward  VI.  and 
Mary  ;  "  much  light  is  thrown  on  its  close  by  Mr.  Nicholls  in  the  "  Chronicle  of 
Queen  Jane  "  (Camden  Society).  Among  outer  observers,  the  Venetian  Soranzo 
deals  with  the  Protectorate ;  and  the  despatches  of  Giovanni  Michiel,  published 
by  Mr.  Friedmann,  with  the  events  of  Mary's  reign.  In  spite  of  endless  errors,  of 
Puritan  prejudices,  and  deliberate  suppressions  of  the  truth  (many  of  which  will 
be  found  corrected  by  Dr.  Maitland's  "  Essay  on  the  Reformation  "),  its  mass  of 
facts  and  wonderful  charm  of  style  will  always  give  a  great  importance  to  the 
"  Book  of  Martyrs  "  of  Foxe.  The  story  of  the  early  Protestants  has  been  admira- 
bly wrought  up  by  Mr.  Froude  ("  History  of  England,"  chap,  vi.).] 

AT  Cromwell's  death  the  success  of  his  policy  was  com- 
plete. The  Monarchy  had  reached  the  height  of  its  power. 
The  old  liberties  of  England  lay  prostrate  at  the  Cromwell 
feet  of  the  king.  The  Lords  were  cowed  and  and  the 
spiritless  ;  the  House  of  Commons  was  filled  with  Monarchy, 
the  creatures  of  the  Court  and  degraded  into  an  engine  of 
tyranny.  Royal  proclamations  were  taking  the  place  of 
parliamentary  legislation ;  benevolences  were  encroach- 
ing more  and  more  on  the  right  of  parliamentary  tax- 
ation. Justice  was  prostituted  in  the  ordinary  courts  to  the 
royal  will,  while  the  boundless  and  arbitrary  powers  of  the 
royal  Council  were  gradually  superseding  the  slower  proc- 
esses of  the  Common  Law.  The  new  religious  changes  had 
thrown  an  almost  sacred  character  over  the  "  majesty  "  of  the 
king.  Henry  was  the  Head  of  the  Church.  From  the 
primate  to  the  meanest  deacon  every  minister  of  it  derived 
from  him  his  sole  right  to  exercise  spiritual  powers.  Tlu- 
voice  of  its  preachers  was  the  echo  of  his  will.  He  jilom- 
could  define  orthodoxy  or  declare  heresy.  The  forms  of  its 


444  HISTORY   OF    THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

worship  and  belief  were  changed  and  rechanged  at  the  royal 
caprice.  Half  of  its  wealth  went  to  swell  the  royal  treasury, 
and  the  other  half  lay  at  the  king's  mercy.  It  was  this  un- 
precedented concentration  of  all  power  in  the  hands  of  a  sin- 
gle man  that  overawed  the  imagination  of  Henry's,  subjects. 
He  was  regarded  as  something  high  above  the  laws  which 
govern  common  men.  The  voices  of  statesmen  and  of  priests 
extolled  his  wisdom  and  power  as  more  than  human.  The 
Parliament  itself  rose  and  bowed  to  the  vacant  throne  when 
his  name  was  mentioned.  An  absolute  devotion  to  his  person 
replaced  the  old  loyalty  to  the  law.  When  the  Primate  of 
the  English  Church  described  the  chief  merit  of  Cromwell, 
it  was  by  asserting  that  he  loved  the  king  "  no  less  than  he 
loved  God." 

It  was  indeed  Cromwell,  as  we  have  seen,  who  more  than 
any  man  had  reared  this  fabric  of  king-worship ;  but  he 
hud  hardly  reared  it  before  it  began  to  give  way.  The 
Cromwell  very  success  of  his  measures  indeed  brought  about 
and  t  e  the  ruin  of  his  policy.  One  of  the  most  striking 
Parliament,  features  of  his  system  had  been  his  revival  of  Par- 
liaments. The  great  assembly  which  the  Monarchy,  from 
Edward  the  Fourth  to  Wolsey,  had  dreaded  and  silenced,  was 
called  to  the  front  again  by  Cromwell,  and  turned  into  the 
most  formidable  weapon  of  despotism.  He  saw  nothing  to 
fear  in  a  House  of  Lords  whose  nobles  cowered  helpless  before 
the  might  of  the  Crown,  and  whose  spiritual  members  his 
policy  was  degrading  into  mere  tools  of  the  royal  will.  Nor 
could  he  find  anything  to  dread  in  a  House  of  Commons 
which  was  crowded  with  members  directly  or  indirectly  nom- 
inated by  the  royal  Council.  With  a  Parliament  such  as  this 
Cromwell  might  well  trust  to  make  the  nation  itself  through 
its  very  representatives  an  accomplice  in  the  work  of  abso- 
lutism. It  was  by  parliamentary  statutes  that  the  Church 
was  prostrated  at  the  feet  of  the  Monarchy.  It  was  by  bills 
of  attainder  that  great  nobles  were  brought  to  the  block.  It 
was  under  constitutional  forms  that  freedom  was  gagged  with 
new  treasons  and  oaths  and  questionings.  But  the  success  of 
such  a  system  depended  wholly  on  the  absolute  servility  of 
Parliament  to  the  will  of  the  Crown,  and  Cromwell's  own 
action  made  the  continuance  of  such  a  servility  impossible. 
The  part  which  the  Houses  were  to  play  in  after  years  shows 


THE  PROTESTANTS.      1540   TO   1553.  445 

the  importance  of  clinging  to  the  forms  of  constitutional 
freedom,  even  when  their  life  is  all  but  lost.  In  the  inevita- 
ble reaction  againsbtyranny  they  furnish  centers  for  the  re- 
viving energies  of  the  people,  while  the  returning  tide  of 
liberty  is  enabled  through  their  preservation  to  flow  quietly 
and  naturally  along  its  traditional  channels.  On  one  occa- 
sion during  Cromwell's  own  rule  a  "great  debute"  on  the 
suppression  of  the  lesser  monasteries  showed  that  elements  of 
resistance  still  survived  ;  and  these  elements  developed  rapidlv 
as  the  power  of  the  Crown  declined  under  the  minority  of 
Edward  and  the  unpopularity  of  Mary.  To  this  revival  of 
a  spirit  of  independence  the  spoliation  of  the  Church  largely 
contributed.  Partly  from  necessity,  partly  from  a  desire  to 
build  up  a  faction  interested  in  the  maintenance  of  their 
ecclesiastical  policy,  Cromwell  and  the  king  squandered  the 
vast  mass  of  wealth  which  flowed  into  the  Treasury  with  reck- 
less prodigality.  Something  like  a  fifth  of  the  actual  land  in 
the  kingdom  was  in  this  way  transferred  from  the  hold  ing  of 
the  Church  to  that  of  nobles  and  gentry.  Not  only  were  the 
older  houses  enriched,  but  a  new  aristocracy  was  erected  from 
among  the  dependants  of  the  Court.  The  Russells  and  the 
Cavendishes  are  familiar  instances  of  families  which  rose 
from  obscurity  through  the  enormous  grants  of  Church-land 
made  to  Henry's  courtiers.  The  old  baronage  was  hardly 
crushed  before  a  new  aristocracy  took  its  place.  "Those 
families  within  or  without  the  bounds  of  the  peerage/'  ob- 
serves Mr.  Hallam,  "  who  are  now  deemed  the  most  consid- 
erable, will  be  found,  with  no  great  number  of  exceptions,  to 
have  first  become  conspicuous  under  the  Tudor  line  of  kings, 
atid,  if  we  could  trace  the  title  of  their  estates,  to  have  ac- 
quired no  small  portion  of  them  mediately  or  immediately 
from  monastic  or  other  ecclesiastical  foundations."  The 
leading  part  which  the  new  peers  took  in  the  events  which 
followed  Henry's  death  gave  a  fresh  strength  and  vigor  to 
the  whole  order.  But  the  smaller  gentry  shared  in  the  gen- 
eral enrichmentof  the  landed  proprietors,  and  thenew  energy 
of  the  Lords  was  soon  followed  by  a  display  of  fresh  political 
independence  :unong  the  Commons  themselves. 

But  it  was  above  all  in  the  new  energy  which  the  religious 
spirit  of  the  people  at  large  drew  from  the  ecclesiastical 
changes  which  he  had  brought  about,  that  the  policy  of  Crom- 


HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

well  was  fatal'to  the  Monarchy.  LollardryV  as  a  great  social 
and  popular  movement,  had  ceased  to  exist,  and  little  re- 
mained of  the  directly  religious  impulse  given  by 
ta  t~  Wyclif  beyond  a  vague  restlessness  and  discon- 
tent with  the  system  of  the  Church.  But  weak 
and  fitful  as  was  the  life  of  Lollardry,  the  prosecutions  whose 
records  lie  scattered  over  the  bishops'  registers  failed  wholly 
to  kill  it.  We  see  groups  meeting  here  and  there  to  read 
"  in  a  great  book  of  heresy  all  one  night  certain  chapters  of 
the  Evangelists  in  English,"  while  transcripts  of  Wyclif's 
tracts  passed  from  hand  to  hand.  The  smoldering  embers 
needed  but  a  breath  to  fan  them  into  flame,  and  the  breath 
came  from  William  Tyndale.  He  had  passed  from  Oxford 
to  Cambridge  to  feel  the  full  impulse  given  by  the  appear- 
ance there  of  the  New  Testament  of  Erasmus.  From  that 
moment  one  thought  was  at  his  heart.  "If  God  spare  my 
life,"  he  said  to  a  learned  controversialist,  "  ere  many  years 
I  will  cause  a  boy  that  driveth  the  plow  shall  know  more 
of  the  scripture  than  thou  dost."  But  he  was  a  man  of  forty 
before  his  dream  became  fact.  Drawn  from  his  retirement  in 
Gloucestershire  by  the  news  of  Luther's  protest  at  Wittem- 
berg,  he  found  shelter  for  a  time  in  London,  and  then  at 
Hamburg,  before  he  found  his  way  to  the  little  town  which 
had  suddenly  become  the  sacred  city  of  the  Reformation. 
Students  of  all  nations  were  flocking  there  with  an  enthusi- 
asm which  resembled  that  of  the  Crusades.  "  As  they  came 
in  sight  of  the  town,"  a  contemporary  tells  us,  "  they  re- 
turned thanks  to  God  with  clasped  hands,  for  from  Wittem- 
berg,  as  heretofore  from  Jerusalem,  the  light  of  evangelical 
truth  had  spread  to  the  utmost  parts  of  the  earth."  In  1525 
his  version  of  the  New  Testament  was  completed.  Driven 
from  Koln,  he  had  to  fly  with  his  sheets  to  Worms,  from 
whence  six  thousand  copies  of  the  New  Testament  were  sent 
to  English  shores.  But  it  was  not  as  a  mere  translation  of 
the  Bible  that  Tyndale's  work  reached  England.  It  came  as 
a  part  of  the  Lutheran  movement;  it  bore  the  Lutheran 
stamp  in  its  version  of  ecclesiastical  words  ;  it  came  too  in 
company  with  Luther's  bitter  invectives  and  reprints  of  the 
tracts  of  Wyclif.  It -was  denounced  as  heretical,  and  a  pile 
of  books  was  burned  before  Wolsey  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard. 
Bibles  and  pamphlets  however  were  smuggled  .over  to  Eng? 


THE  PROTESTANTS.      1540   TO   1558.  447 

land  and  circulated  among  the  poorer  and  trading  classes 
through  the  agency  of  an  association  of  "  Christian  Brethren," 
consisting  principally  of  London  tradesmen  and  citizens,  but 
whose  missionaries  spread  over  the  country  at  large.  They 
found  their  way  at  once  to  the  Universities,  where  the  in- 
tellectual impulse  given  by  the  New  Learning  was  quicken- 
ing religious  speculation.  Cambridge  had  already  won  a 
name  for  heresy,  and  the  Cambridge  scholars  whom  Wolsey 
introduced  into  Cardinal  College  which  he  was  founding 
spread  the  contagion  through  Oxford.  A  group  of  "  Breth- 
ren" which  was  formed  in  Cardinal  College  for  the  secret 
reading  and  discussion  of  the  Epistles  soon  included  the  more 
intelligent  and  learned  scholars  of  the  University.  It  was  in 
vain  that  Clark,  the  center  of  this  group,  strove  to  dissuade 
fresh  members  from  joining  it  by  warnings  of  the  impending 
dangers.  "  I  fell  down  on  my  knees  at  his  feet,"  says  one  of 
them,  Anthony  Dalaber,  "and  with  tears  and  sighs  besought 
him  that  for  the  tender  mercy  of  God  he  should  not  refuse 
me,  saying  that  I  trusted  verily  that  He  who  had  begun  this 
on  me  would  not  forsake  me,  but  would  give  me  grace  to 
continue  therein  to  the  end.  When  he  heard  me  say  so  he 
came  to  me,  took  me  in  his  arms,  and  kissed  me,  saying, 
'The  Lord  God  Almighty  grant  you  so  to  do,  and  from 
henceforth  ever  take  me  for  your  father,  and  I  will  take  you 
for  my  son  in  Christ.'*  The  excitement  which  followed  on 
this  rapid  diffusion  of  Tyndale's  works  forced  Wolsey  to  more 
vigorous  action  ;  many  of  the  Oxford  Brethren  were  thrown 
into  prison  and  their  books  seized.  But  in  spite  of  the  panic 
of  the  Protestants,  some  of  whom  fled  oversea,  little  severity 
was  really  exercised  ;  and  Wolsey  remained  steadily  indiffer- 
ent to  all  but  political  matters. 

Henry's  chief  anxiety,  indeed,  was  lest  in  the  outburst 
against  heresy  the  interest  of  the  New  Learning  should  suffer 
harm.     This  was  remarkably  shown  in  the  pro- 
tection he  extended  to  one  who  was  destined  to    Latimer. 
eclipse   even    the   fame   of   Colet  as    a    popular 
preacher.     Hugh  Latimer  was  the  son  of  a  Leicestershire 
yeoman,  whose  armor  the  boy  had  buckled  on  ere  he  set  out 
to  meet  the  Cornish  insurgents  at  Blackheath  field.     He  lias 
himself  described  the  soldierly  training  of  his  youth.     "  My 
father  was  delighted  to  teach  me  to  shoot  with  the  bow.     He 


448  HISTOBY   OF  THE  ENQLISH  PEOPLE. 

taught  me  how  to  draw,  how  to  lay  my  body  to  the  bow  not 
to  draw  with  strength  of  arm  as  other  nations  do.  but  with 
the  strength  of  the  body."  At  fourteen  he  was  at  Cam- 
bridge, flinging  himself  into  the  New  Learning  which  was 
winning  its  way  there  with  a  zeal  which  at  last  told  on  his 
physical  strength.  The  ardor  of  his  mental  efforts  left  its 
mark  on  him  in  ailments  and  enfeebled  health,  from  which, 
vigorous  as  he  was,  his  frame  never  wholly  freed  itself.  Bat 
he  was  destined  to  be  known,  not  as  a  scholar,  but  as  a 
preacher.  The  sturdy  good  sense  of  the  man  shook  off  the 
pedantry  of  the  schools  as  well  as  the  subtlety  of  the  theolo- 
gian in  his  addresses  from  the  pulpit.  He  had  little  turn  for 
speculation,  and  in  the  religious  changes  of  the  day  we  find 
him  constantly  lagging  behind  his  brother  reformers.  But 
he  had  the  moral  earnestness  of  a  Jewish  prophet,  and  his 
denunciations  of  wrong  had  a  prophetic  directness  and  fire. 
"Have  pity  on  your  soul,"  he  cried  to  Henry,  "and  think 
that  the  day  is  even  at  hand  when  you  shall  give  an  account 
of  vour  office,  and  of  the  blood  that  hath  been  shed  by  vour 

•/  »/     »/ 

sword. "  His  irony  was  yet  more  telling  than  his  invective. 
"  I  would  ask  you  a  strange  question,"  he  said  once  at  Paul's 
Cross  to  a  ring  of  Bishops,  "  who  is  the  most  diligent  prelate 
in  all  England,  that  passeth  all  the  rest  in  doing  of  his  office  ? 
I  will  tell  you.  It  is  the  Devil  !  of  all  the  pack  of  them  that 
have  cure,  the  Devil  shall  go  for  my  money  ;  for  he  ordereth 
his  business.  Therefore,  you  unpreaching  prelates,  learn  of 
the  Devil  to  be  diligent  in  your  office. '  If  you  will  not  learn 
of  God,  for  shame  learn  of  the  Devil."  But  IIP  was  far  from 
limiting  himself  to  invective.  His  homely  humor  breaks  in 
with  story  and  apologue  ;  his  earnestness  is  always  tempered 
with  good  sense  ;  his  plain  and  simple  style  quickens  with  a 
shrewd  mother-wit.  He  talks  to  his  hearers  as  a  man  talks 
to  his  friends,  telling  stories  such  as  we  have  given  of  his 
own  life  at  home,  or  chatting  about  the  changes- and  chances 
of  the  day  with  a  transparent  simplicity  and  truth  that  raises 
even  his  chat  into  grandeur.  His  theme  is  always  the  actual 
world  about  him,  and  in  his  homely  lessons  of  loyalty,  of  in- 
dustry, of  pity  for  the  poor,  he  touches  upon  almost  every 
subject,  from  the  plow  to  the  throne.  No  such  preaching 
had  been  heard  in  England  before  his  day,  and  with  the 
growth  of  his  fame  grew  the  danger  of  persecution.  There 


THE  PROTESTANTS.      1540   TO  1553.  44& 

were  moments  when,  bold  as  he  was,  Latirner's  heart  failed 
him.  "  If  I  had  not  trust  that  God  will  help  me,"  he  wrote 
once,  "  I  think  the  ocean  sea  would  have  divided  my  lord  of 
London  and  me  by  this  day."  A  citation  for  heresy  at  last 
brought  the  danger  home.  "  I  intend,"  he  wrote  with  his 
peculiar  medley  of  humor  and  pathos,  "to  make  merry  with 
rny  parishioners  this  Christmas,  for  all  the  sorrow,  lest  per- 
chance I  may  never  return  to  them  again/*  But  he  was 
saved  throughout  by  the  steady  protection  of  the  Court. 
Wolsey  upheld  him  against  the  threats  of  the  Bishop  of  Ely  ; 
Henry  made  him  his  own  chaplain  ;  and  the  king's  interpo- 
sition at  this  critical  moment  forced  Latimer's  judges  to  con- 
tent themselves  with  a  few  vague  words  of  submission. 

Henry's  quarrel  with  Rome  saved  the  Protestants  from  the 
keener  persecution  which  troubled  them  after  Wolsey's  fall. . 
The  divorce,  the  renunciation  of  the  Papacy,  the  cromweU 
degradation  of  the  clergy,  the  suppression  of  theandtheProt- 
monasteries,  the  religious  changes,  fell  like  a  series  wt-nts. 
of  heavy  blows  upon  the  priesthood.  From  persecutors  they 
suddenly  sank  into  men  trembling  for  their  very  lives.  Those 
whom  they  had  threatened  were  placed  at  their  head.  Cran- 
mer  became  Primate  ;  Shaxton,  a  favorer  of  the  new  changes, 
was  raised  to  the  see  of  Salisbury  ;  Barlow,  a  yet  more  ex- 
treme partizan,  to  that  of  St.  David's  ;  Hilsey  to  that  of 
Rochester  ;  Goodrich  to  that  of  Ely  ;  Fox  to  that  of  Hereford. 
Latimer  himself  became  Bishop  of  Worcester,  and  in  a  vehe- 
ment address  to  the  clergy  in  Convocation  taunted  them 
with  their  greed  and  superstition  in  the  past,  and  with  their 
inactivity  when  the  king  and  his  Parliament  were  laboring 
for  the  revival  of  religion.  The  aim  of  Cromwell,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  simply  that  of  the  New  Learning  ;  he  desired 
religious  reform  rather  than  revolution,  a  simplification  rather 
than  a  change  of  doctrine,  the  purification  of  worship  rather 
than  the  introduction  of  a  new  ritual.  But  it  was  impossible 
to  strike  blow  after  blow  at  the  Church  without  leaning  in- 
stinctively to  the  party  who  sympathized  with  the  German 
reformation,  and  were  longing  fora  more  radical  change  at 
.home.  Few  as  these  "Lutherans"  or  "  Protestants"  still 
were  in  numbers,  their  new  hopes  made  them  a  formidable 
t'orce  ;  ai.d  in  the  school  of  persecution  they  had  learned  a 
violeucfc  which  delighted  in  outrages.on  the  faith  which  had 
19 


450  HISTORY  OP   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

BO  long  trampled  them  under  foot.  At  the  very  outset  of 
Cromwell's  changes  four  {Suffolk  youths  broke  into  the  church 
at  Dovercourt,  tore  down  a  wonder-working  crucifix,  and 
burned  it  in  the  fields.  The  suppression  of  the  ksser  mon- 
asteries was  the  signal  for  a  new  outburst  of  ribald  insult  to 
the  old  religion.  The  roughness,  insolence,  and  extortion  of 
the  Commissioners  sent  to  effect  it  drove  the  whole  monas- 
tic body  to  despair.  Their  servants  rode  along  the  road  with 
copes  for  doublets  and  tunicles  for  saddle-cloths,  and  scat- 
tered panic  among  the  larger  houses  which  were  left.  Some 
sold  their  jewels  and  relics  to  provide  for  the  evil  day  they 
saw  approaching.  Some  begged  of  their  own  will  for  dis- 
solution. It  was  worse  when  fresh  ordinances  of  the  Vicar- 
General  ordered  the  removal  or  objects  of  superstitious  vener- 
ation. The  removal,  bitter  enough  to  those  whose  religion 
twined  itself  around  the  image  or  the  relic  which  was  taken 
away,  was  yet  more  embittered  by  the  insults  with  which  it 
was  accompanied.  The  miraculous  rood  at  Boxley,  which 
bowed  its  head  and  stirred  its  eyes,  was  paraded  from  market 
to  market  and  exhibited  as  a  juggle  before  the  Court.  Images 
of  the  Virgin  were  stripped  of  their  costly  vestments  and  sent 
to  be  publicly  burnt  at  London.  Latimer  forwarded  to 
the  capital  the  figure  of  Our  Lady,  which  he  had  thrust  out 
of  his  cathedral  church  at  Worcester,  with  rough  words  of 
scorn  :  "  She  with  her  old  sister  of  Walsingham,  her  younger 
sister  of  Ipswich,  and  their  two  other  sisters  of  Doncaster 
and  Penrice,  would  make  a  jolly  muster  at  Smithfield." 
Fresh  orders  were  given  to  fling  all  relics  from  their  reli- 
quaries, and  to  level  every  shrine  with  the  ground.  The 
bones  of  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury  were  torn  from  the  stately 
shrine  which  had  been  the  glory  of  his  metropolitan  church, 
and  his  name  was  erased  from  the  service-books  as  that  of  a 
traitor.  The  introduction  of  the  English  Bible  into  churches 
gave  a  new  opening  for  the  zeal  of  the  Protestants.  In  spite 
of  royal  injunctions  that  it  should  be  read  decently  and  with- 
out comment,  the  young  zealots  of  the  party  prided  them- 
selves on  shouting  it  out  to  a  circle  of  excited  hearers  during 
the  service  of  mass,  and  accompanied  their  reading  with 
violent  expositions.  Protestant  maidens  took  the  new 
English  primer  to  church  with  them,  and  studied  it  osten- 
tatiously during  matins.  Insult  passed  into  open  violence 


THE  PROTESTANTS.      1540  TO   1553.  451 

when  the  Bishops'  Courts  were  invaded  and  broken  up  by 
Protestant  mobs  ;  and  law  and  public  opinion  were  outraged 
at  once  when  priests  who  favored  the  new  doctrines  began 
openly  to  bring  home  wives  to  their  vicarages.  A  fiery  out- 
burst of  popular  discussion  compensated  for  the  silence  of 
the  pulpits.  The  new  Scriptures,  in  Henry's  bitter  words  of 
complaint,  were  "  disputed,  rhymed,  sung,  and  ja:igled  in  every 
tavern  and  ale-house."  The  articles  which  dictated  the  belief 
of  the  English  Church  roused  a  furious  controversy.  Above 
all,  the  Sacrament  of  the  Mass,  the  center  of  the  Catholic 
system  of  faith  and  worship,  and  which  still  remained  sacred 
to  the  bulk  of  Englishmen,  was  attacked  with  a  scurrility 
and  profaneness  which  passes  belief.  The  doctrine  of  Tran- 
substantiation,  which  was  as  yet  recognized  by  law,  was  held 
up  to  scorn  in  ballads  and  mystery  plays.  In  one  church  a 
Protestant  lawyer  raised  a  dog  in  his  hands  when  the  priest 
elevated  the  Host.  The  most  sacred  words  of  the  old  wor- 
ship, the  words  of  consecration,  "  Hoc  est  corpus,"  were  tra- 
vestied into  a  nickname  for  jugglery  as  "  Hocus-pocus."  It 
was  by  this  attack  on  the  Mass,  even  more  than  by  the  other 
outrages,  that  the  temper  both  of  Henry  and  the  nation  was 
stirred  to  a  deep  resentment ;  and  the  first  signs  of  reaction 
were  seen  in  the  Act  of  the  Six  Articles,  which  was  passed 
by  the  Parliament  with  general  assent.  On  the  doctrine  of 
Transubstantiation,  which  was  reasserted  by  the  first  of 
these,  there  was  no  difference  of  feeling  or  belief  between  the 
men  of  the  New  Learning  and  the  older  Catholics.  But  the 
road  to  a  further  instalment  of  even  moderate  reform  seemed 
closed  by  the  five  other  articles  which  sanctioned  communion 
in  one  kind,  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy,  monastic  vows,  private 
masses,  and  auricular  confession.  A  more  terrible  feature  of 
the  reaction  was  the  revival  of  persecution.  Burning  was 
denounced  as  the  penalty  for  a  denial  of  transubstantiation  ; 
on  a  second  offense  it  became  the  penalty  for  an  infraction 
of  the  other  five  doctrines.  A  refusal  to  confess  or  to  attend 
Mass  was  made  felony.  It  was  in  vain  that  Cranmer,  with 
the  five  bishops  who  partially  sympathized  with  the  Protes- 
tants, struggled  against  the  bill  in  the  Lords  :  the  Com- 
mons were  "'all  of  one  opinion,"  and  Henry  himself  acted  as 
spokesman  on  the  side  of  the  Articles.  In  London  alone 
five  hundred  Protestants  were  indicted  under  the  new  act. 


452  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Latimer  and  Shaxton  were  imprisoned,  and  the  former  forced 
into  a  resignation  of  his  see.  Cnuimer  himself  was  only  saved 
by  Henry's  personal  favor.  But  the  first  burst  of  triumph 
hud  no  sooner  spent  itself  than  the  strong  hand  of  Cromwell 
again  made  itself  felt.  Though  his  opinions  remained  those 
'  of  the  New  Learning  and  differed  little  from  the  general 
sentiment  represented  in  the  Act,  he  leaned  instinctively  to 
the  one  party  which  did  not  long  for  his  fall.  His  wish  was 
to  restrain  the  Protestant  excesses,  but  he  had  no  mind  to 
ruin  the  Protestants.  The  bishops  were  quietly  released. 
The  London  indictments  were  quashed.  The  magistrates 
werechecked  in  their  enforcement  of  the  law,  while  a  general 
pardon  cleared  the  prisons  of  the  heretics  who  hud  been 
arrested  under  its  provisions.  A  few  months  after  the  enact- 
ment of  the  Six  Articles  we  find  from  a  Protestant  letter  that 
persecution  had  wholly  ceased,  "the  Word  is  powerfully 
preached  and  books  of  every  kind  may  safely  be  exposed  for 
sale." 

At  Cromwell's  fall  his  designs  seemed  to  be  utterly  aban- 
doned. The  marriage  with  Anne  of  Cleves  was  annulled, 
The  Death  an(^  a  new  queen  found  in  Catharine  Howard,  a 
cf  Henry  niece  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk.  Norfolk  himself 
VIII.  returned  to  power,  and  resumed  the  policy  which 
Cromwell  had  interrupted.  Like  the  king  lie  looked  to  an 
Imperial  alliance  rather  than  an  alliance  with  Francis  and 
the  Lutherans.  He  still  clung  to  the  dream  of  the  New 
Learning,  to  a  purification  of  the  Church  through  a  general 
Council,  and  a  reconciliation  of  England  with  the  purified 
body  of  Catholicism.  For  such  a  purpose  it  was  necessary 
to  vindicate  English  orthodoxy  ;  and  to  ally  England  with 
the  Emperor,  by  whose  influence  alone  the  assembly  of  such 
a  Council  could  be  brought  about.  To  the  hotter  Catholics 
indeed,  as  to  the  hotter  Protestants,  the  years  after  Crom- 
well's fall  seemed  years  of  a  gradual  return  to  Catholi- 
cism. There  was  a  slight  sharpening  of  persecution  for  the 
Protestants,  and  restrictions  were  put  on  the  reading  of  the 
English  Bible.  But  neither  Norfolk  nor  his  master  desired 
any  rigorous  measure  of  reaction.  There  was  no  thought  of 
reviving  the  old  superstitions,  or  undoing  the  work  which 
had  been  done,  but  simply  of  guarding  the  purified  fuith. 
against  Lutheran,  heresy.  The  work  of  supplying  men  with 


THE  PROTESTANTS.   1540  TO  1553.       453 

ineans  of  devotion  in  their  own  tongue  was  still  carried  on  by 
the  publication  of  an  English  Litany  and  prayers,  which 
furnished  the  germ  of  the  national  Prayer  Book  of  a  later 
time.  The  greater  abbeys  which  had  been  saved  by  the 
energetic  resistance  of  the  Parliament  in  1536  had  in  1539  been 
involved  in  the  same  ruin  with  the  smaller  ;  but  in  spite  of  this 
confiscation  the  treasury  was  new  empty,  and  by  a  bill  of  1545 
more  than  two  thousand  chauutries  and  chapels,  with  a  hun- 
dred and  ten  hospitals,  were  suppressed  to  the  pro6t  of  the 
Crown.  If  the  friendship  of  England  was  offered  to  Charles, 
when  the  struggle  between  France  and  the  Housn  of  Austria 
burst  again  for  a  time  into  flame,  it  was  because  Henry  saw  in 
the  Imperial  alliance  the  best  hope  for  the  reformation  of  the 
Church  and  the  restoration  of  unity.  But,  as  Cromwell  had 
foreseen,  the  time  for  a  peaceful  reform  and  for  a  general  re- 
union of  Christendom  was  past.  The  Council,  so  passionately 
desired,  met  at  Trent  in  no  spirit  of  conciliation,  but  to  ratify 
the  very  superstitions  and  errors  against  which  the  New  Learn- 
ing had  protested,  and  which  England  and  Germany  had  flung 
away.  The  long  hostility  of  France  and  the  House  of  Austria 
merged  in  the  greater  struggle  which  was  opening  between. 
Catholicism  and  the  Reformation.  The  Emperor  allied  him- 
self definitely  with  the  Pope.  As  their  hopes  of  a  middle  course 
faded,  the  Catholic  nobles  themselves  drifted  unconsciously 
with  the  tide  of  reaction.  Anne  Ascue  was  tortured  and 
burnt  with  three  companions  for  the  denial  of  Transubstan- 
tiation.  Latimer  was  examined  before  the  Council  ;  and 
Cranmer  himself,  who  in  the  general  dissolution  of  the 
moderate  party,  was  drifting  towards  Protestantism  as  Nor- 
folk was  drifting  towards  Rome,  was  for  a  moment  in  danger. 
But  at  the  last  hours  of  his  life  Henry  proved  himself  true  to 
the  work  he  had  begun.  His  resolve  not  to  bow  to  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  Papacy  sanctioned  at  Trent  threw  him, 
whether  he  would  or  no,  back  on  the  policy  of  the  great 
minister  whom  he  had  hurried  to  the  block.  He  offered  to 
unite  in  a  "League  Christian"  with  the  German  Princes. 
He  consented  to  the  change,  suggested  by  Cranmer,  of  tho 
Mass  into  a  Communion  Service.  He  flung  the  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk into  the  Tower  as  a  traitor,  and  sent  his  son,  the  Earl  of 
Surrey,  to  the  block.  The  Earl  of  Hertford,  the  head  of  the 
*'  new  men,"  and  known  aa  apatroii  01  the  Protestants,  carue 


454  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

to  the  front,  and  was  appointed  one  of  the  Council  of  Regency 
which  Henry  nominated  at  his  death. 

Catharine  Howard  atoned  like  Anne  Boleyn  for  her  un- 

chastity  by  a  traitor's  death  ;  her  successor  on  the  throne, 

Catharine  Parr,  had  the  luck  to  outlive  the  king. 

Somerset.  But  of  Henry's  numerous  marriages  only  three 
children  survived  ;  Mary  and  Elizabeth,  the 
daughters  of  Catharine  of  Aragon  and  of  Anne  Boleyn  ;  and 
Edward,  the  boy  who  now  ascended  the  throne  as  Edward 
the  Sixth,  his  son  by  Jane  Seymour.  As  Edward  was  but 
nine  years  old,  Henry  had  appointed  a  carefully  balanced 
Council  of  Regency  ;  but  the  will  fell  into  the  keeping  of 
Jane's  brother,  whom  he  had  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Lord 
Hertford,  and  who  at  a  later  time  assumed  the  title  of  Duke 
of  Somerset.  When  the  list  of  regents  was  at  last  disclosed 
Gardiner,  who  had  till  now  been  the  leading  minister,  was  de- 
clared to  have  been  excluded  from  it ;  and  Hertford  seized  the 
whole  royal  power  with  the  title  of  Protector.  His  personal 
weakness  forced  him  at  once  to  seek  for  popular  support  by 
measures  which  marked  the  first  retreat  of  the  Monarchy  from 
the  position  of  pure  absolutism  which  it  had  reached  under 
Henry.  The  Statute  which  had  given  to  royal  proclamations 
the  force  of  law  was  repealed,  and  several  of  the  new  felonies 
and  treasons  which  Cromwell  had  created  and  used  with  so 
terrible  an  effect  were  erased  from  the  Statute  Book.  The 
hope  of  support  from  the  Protestants  united  with  Hertford's 
personal  predilections  in  his  patronage  of  the  innovations 
against  which  Henry  had  battled  to  the  last.  Cranmer  had 
now  drifted  iuto  a  purely  Protestant  position  ;  and  his  open 
break  with  the  older  system  followed  quickly  on  Hertford's 
rise  to  power.  "  This  year/'  says  a  contemporary,  "  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  did  eat  meat  openly  in  Lent  in  the 
Hall  of  Lambeth,  the  like  of  which  was  never  seen  since 
England  was  a  Christian  country."  This  significant  act  was 
followed  by  a  rapid  succession  of  sweeping  changes.  The 
legal  prohibitions  of  Lollardry  were  removed  ;  the  Six  Articles 
were  repealed  ;  a  royal  injunction  removed  all  pictures  and 
images  from  the  churches  ;  priests  were  permitted  to  marry  ; 
the  new  Communion  which  had  taken  the  place  of  the  Mass 
was  ordered  to  be  administered  in.  both  kinds,  and  in  the 
English  tongue  ;  an  English  book  of  Common  Prayer,  the 


THE  PROTESTANTS.      1540   TO   1553.  455 

Liturgy  which,  with  slight  alterations,  is  still  used  in  the 
Church  of  England,  replaced  the  Missal  and  Breviary  from 
which  its  contents  are  mainly  drawn.  These  sweeping  reli- 
gious changes  were  carried  through  with  the  despotism,  if  not 
with  the  vigor,  of  Cromwell.  Gardiner,  who  in  his  acceptance 
of  the  personal  supremacy  of  the  sovereign  denounced  all 
ecclesiastical  changes  made  during  the  king's  minority  as 
illegal  and  invalid,  was  sent  to  the  Tower.  The  power  of 
preaching  was  restricted  by  the  issue  of  licenses  only  to  the 
friends  of  the  Primate.  While  all  counter  arguments  were 
rigidly  suppressed,  a  crowd  of  Protestant  pamphleteers 
flooded  the  country  with  vehement  invectives  against  the 
Mass  and  its  superstitious  accompaniments.  The  assent  of 
noble  and  landowner  was  won  by  the  suppression  .of  chaun- 
tries  and  religious  gilds,  and  by  glutting  their  greed  with 
the  last  spoils  of  the  Church.  German  and  Italian  mercen- 
aries were  introduced  to  stamp  out  the  wider  popular  discon- 
tent which  broke  out  in  the  east,  in  the  west,  and  in  the  mid- 
land counties.  The  Cornishmen  refused  to  receive  the  new 
service  '•'  because  it  is  like  a  Christmas  game."  Devon- 
shire demanded  in  open  revolt  the  restoration  of  the  Mass  and 
the  Six  Articles.  The  agrarian  discontent,  now  heightened 
by  economic  changes,  woke  again  in  the  general  disorder. 
Twenty  thousand  men  gathered  round  the  "oak  of  Reform- 
ation "  near  Norwich,  and  repulsing  the  royal  troops  in  a 
desperate  engagement  renewed  the  old  cries  for  the  removal 
of  evil  counselors,  a  prohibition  of  enclosures,  and  redress 
for  the  grievances  of  the  poor. 

Revolt  was  stamped  out  in  blood  ;  but  the  weakness  which 
the  Protector  had  shovyn  in  presence  of  the  danger,  his  tam- 
pering with  popular  demands,  and  the  anger  of    i^,  p^ 
the  nobles  at   his  resolve   to    enforce   the  laws       estant 
against   enclosures  and   evictions,  ended  in   his     M-8"*18- 
fall.     He  was  forced  by  the    Council   to  resign,  and  his 
power  passed  to   the  Earl  of  Warwick,  to   whose  ruthless 
severity  the  suppression  of  the  revolt  was  mainly  due.     But 
the  change  of  governors  brought  about  no  change  of  system. 
The  rule  of  the  upstart  nobles  who  formed  the  Council  of 
Regency  became  simply  a  rule  of  terror.     "  The  greater  part 
of  the  people/'  one  of  their  creatures,  Cecil,  avowed,  "  ia 
not  in  favor  of  defending  this  cause,  but  of  aiding  its  adver- 


456  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

saries  ;  on  that  side  are  the  greater  part  of  the  nobles,  who 
absent  themselves  from  Court,  all  the  bishops  save  three  or 
four,  almost  all  the  judges  and  lawyers,  almost  all  the  jus- 
tices of  the  peace,  the  priests,  who  can  move  their  flocks 
any  way,  for  the  whole  of  the  commonalty  is  in- such  a  state 
of  irritation  that  it  will  easily  follow  any  stir  towards  change." 
But,  heedless  of  danger  from  without  or  from  within,  Cran- 
mer  and  his  colleagues  advanced  yet  more  boldly  in  the 
career  of  innovation.  Four  prelates  who  adhered  to  the 
older  system  were  deprived  of  their  sees  and  committed  on 
frivolous  pretexts  to  the  Tower.  A  new  Catechism  embodied 
the  doctrines  of  the  reformers  ;  and  a  Book  of  Homilies, 
which  enforced  the  chief  Protestant  tenets,  was  appointed  to 
be  read  in  churches.  A  crowning  defiance  was  given  to  the 
doctrine  o'f  the  Mass  by  an  order  to  demolish  the  stone  altars 
and  replace  them  by  wooden  tables,  which  were  stationed 
for  the  most  part  in  the  middle  of  the  church.  A  revised 
Prayer-book  was  issued,  and  every  change  made  in  it  leaned 
directly  towards  the  extreme  Protestantism  which  was  at 
this  time  finding  a  home  at  Geneva.  , Forty-two  Articles  of 
Religion  were  introduced;  and  though  since  reduced  by 
omissions  to  thirty-nine,  these  have  remained  to  this  day  the 
formal  standard  of  doctrine  in  the  English  Church.  The 
sufferings  of  the  Protestants  had  failed  to  teach  them  the 
•worth  of  religious  liberty  ;  and  a  new  code  of  ecclesiastical 
laws,  which  was  ordered  to  be  drawn  up  by  a  board  of  Com- 
missioners as  a  substitute  for  the  Canon  Law  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  although  it  shrank  from  the  penalty  of  death,  at- 
tached that  of  perpetual  imprisonment  or  exile  to  the  crimes 
of  heresy,  blasphemy,  and  adultery,  and  declared  excom- 
munication to  involve  a  severance  of  the  offender  from  the 
mercy  of  God,  and  his  deliverance  into  the  tyranny  of  the 
devil.  Delays  in  the  completion  of  this  Code  prevented  its 
legal  establishment  during  Edward's  reign  ;  but  the  use  of 
the  new  Liturgy  and  attendance  at  the  new  service  was  en- 
forced by  imprisonment,  and  subscription  to  the  Articles  of 
Faith  was  demanded  by  royal  authority  from  all  clergymen, 
churchwardens,  and  schoolmasters.  The  distaste  for  changes 
so  hurried  and  so  rigorously  enforced  was  increased  by  the 
daring  speculations  of  the  more  extreme  Protestants.  The 
leal  value  of  the  religious  revolution  of  the  sixteenth  century 


THE  PROTESTANTS.      1540   TO  1553.  457 

to-  mankind  lay,  not  in  its  substitution  of  one  creed  for 
another,  but  in  the  new  spirit  of  inquiry,  the  new  freedom 
of  thought-  and  of  discussion,  which  was  awakened  during 
the  process  of  change.  But  however  familiiir  such  a  truth 
may  be  to  us,  it  was  absolutely  hidden  from  the  England  of 
the  time.  Men  heard  with  horror  that  the  foundations  of 
faith  and  morality  were  questioned,  polygamy  advocated, 
oatiis  denounced  as  unlawful,  community  of  goods  raised 
into  a  sacred  obligation,  the  very  Godhead  of  the  Founder 
of  Christianity  denied.  The  repeal  of  the  Statute  of  Heresy 
left  the  powers  of  the  Common  Law  intact,  and  Cranmer 
availed  himself  of  these  to  send  heretics  of  the  last  class  with- 
out mercy  to  the  stake  ;  but  within  the  Church  itself  the 
Primate's  desire  for  uniformity  was  roughly  resisted  by  the 
more  ardent  members  of  his  own  party.  Hooper,  who  had 
been  named  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  refused  to  wear  the 
episcopal  habits,  and  denounced  them  as  the  livery  of  the 
"  harlot  of  Babylon,"  a  name  for  the  Papacy  which  was  sup- 
posed to  have  been  discovered  in  the  Apocalypse.  Ecclesi- 
astical order  was  almost  at  an  end.  Priests  flung  aside  the 
surplice  as  superstitious.  Patrons  of  livings  presented  their 
huntsmen  or  gamekeepers  to  the  benefices  in  their  gift,  and 
kept  the  stipend.  All  teaching  of  divinity  ceased  at  the 
Universities  :  the  students  indeed  had  fallen  off  in  numbers, 
the  libraries  were  in  part  scattered  or  burnt,  the  intellectual 
impulse  of  the  Now  Learning  died  away.  One  noble  measure 
indeed,  the  foundation  of  eighteen  Grammar  Schools,  was 
destined  to  throw  a  luster  over  the  name  of  Edward,  but  it 
had  no  time  to  bear  fruit  in  his  reign.  All  that  men  saw 
was  religious  and  political  chaos,  in  which  ecclesiastical  order 
had  perished  and  in  which  politics  were  dying  down  into 
the  squabbles  of  a  knot  of  nobles  over  the  spoils  of  the  Church 
and  the  Crown.  The  plunder  of  the  chauntries  and  the  gilds 
failed  to  glut  the  appetite  of  the  crew  of  spoilers.  Half  the 
lands  of  every  see  were  flung  to  them  in  vain  :  the  wealthy 
see  of  Durham  had  been  suppressed  to  satisfy  their  greed  ; 
and  iho  whole  endowments  of  the  Church  were  threatened 
with  confiscation.  But  while  the  courtiers  gorged  themselves 
with  manors,  the  Treasury  grew  poorer.  The  coinage  was 
again  debased.  Crown  lands  to  the  value  of  five  millions  of 
pur  modern  money  had  been  granted  away  to  the  friends  of 


458  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Somerset  and  Warwick.  The  royal  expenditure  had  mounted 
in  seventeen  years  to  more  than  four  times  its  previous  total. 
It  is  clear  that  England  must  soon  have  risen  against  the 
misrule  of  the  Protectorate,  if  the  Protectorate  had  not 
fallen  by  the  intestine  divisions  of  the  plunderers  themselves. 


Section  II.— The  Martyrs.    1553—1558. 

[Authorities — As  before.] 

The  waning  healtb  of  Edward  warned  "Warwick,  who 
had  now  become  Duke  of  Northumberland,  of  an  un- 
looked-for danger.  Mary,  the  daughter  of  Oath- 
Mary,  arine  of  Aragon,  who  had  been  placed  next  to 
Edward  by  the  Act  of  Succession,  remained 
firm  amidst  all  the  changes  of  the  time  to  the  older  faith ; 
and  her  accession  threatened  to  be  the  signal  for  its 
return.  But  the  bigotry  of  the  young  king  was  easily 
brought  to  consent  to  a  daring  scheme  by  which  her  rights 
might  be  set  aside.  Edward's  "  plan/'  as  Northumberland 
dictated  it,  annulled  both  the  Statute  of  Succession  and  the 
will  of  his  father,  to  whom  the  right  of  disposing  of  the 
Crown  after  the  death  of  his  own  children  had  been  entrusted 
by  Parliament.  It  set  aside  both  Mary  and  Elizabeth,  who 
stood  next  in  the  Act.  With  this  exclusion  of  the  direct 
line  of  Henry  the  Eighth  the  succession  would  vest,  if  the 
rules  of  hereditary  descent  were  observed,  in  the  descendants 
of  his  elder  sister  Margaret,  who  had  become  by  her  first 
husband,  James  the  Fourth  of  Scotland,  the  grandmother  of 
the  young  Scottish  Queen,  Mary  Stuart;  and,  by  a  second 
marriage  with  the  Earl  of  Angus,  was  the  grandmother  of 
Henry  Stuart,  Lord  Darnley.  Henry's  will,  however,  had 
passed  by  the  children  of  Margaret,  and  had  placed  next  to 
Elizabeth  in  the  succession  the  children  of  his  younger  sister 
Mary,  the  wife  of  Charles  Brandon,  the  Duke  of  Suffolk. 
Frances,  Mary's  child  by  this  marriage,  was  still  living,  and 
was  the  mother  of  three  daughters  by  her  marriage  with  Grey, 
Lord  Dorset,  a  hot  partizan  of  the  religious  changes,  who  had 
been  raised  under  the  Protectorate  to  the  Dukedom  of  Suffolk. 
Frances,  however,  was  parsed  over,  and  Edward's  "plan" 
named  her  eldest  child  Jane  as  his  successor.  The  marriage 


MARY  TUDOR. 
Paintfd  by  Antonio  Moro,  Pratlo  .Museum.  Madriil. 


THE  MARTYRS.      1553  TO  1558.  459 

of  Jane  Grey  with  Guilford  Dudley,  the  fourth  son  of  Nor- 
thumberland, was  all  that  was  needed  to  complete  the  unscru- 
pulous plot.  The  consent  of  the  judges  and  council  to  her 
succession  was  extorted  by  the  authority  of  the  dying  king, 
and  the  new  sovereign  was  proclaimed  on  Edward's  death. 
.But  the  temper  of  the  whole  people  rebelled  against  so  law- 
less a  usurpation.  The  eastern  counties  rose  as  one  man  to 
support  Mary  ;  and  when  Northumberland  marched  from 
London  with  ten  thousand  at  his  back  to  crush  the  rising, 
the  Londoners,  Protestant  as  they  were,  showed  their  ill-will 
by  a  stubborn  silence.  "  The  people  crowd  to  look  upon  us." 
the  Duke  noted  gloomily,  "but  not  one  calls  'God  speed 
ye.'*  The  Council  no  sooner  saw  the  popular  reaction  than 
they  proclaimed  Mary  queen  ;  the  fleet  and  the  levies  of  the 
shires  declared  in  her  favor.  North  umberland'sroimige  sud- 
denly gave  way,  and  his  retreat  to  Cambridge  was  the  signal 
for  a  general  defection.  The  Duke  himself  threw  his  cnp 
into  the  air  and  shouted  with  his  men  for  Queen  Mary.  But 
his  submission  failed  to  avert  his  doom  ;  and  the  death  of 
Northumberland  drew  with  it  the  imprisonment  in  the  Tower 
of  the  hapless  girl  whom  he  had  made  the  tool  of  his  ambi- 
tion. The  whole  system  which  had  been  pursued  during 
Edward's  reign  fell  with  a  sudden  crash.  London  indeed  re- 
tained much  of  its  Protestant  sympathy,  but  over  the  rest  of 
the  country  the  tide  of  reaction  swept  without  a  check.  The 
married  priests  were  driven  from  their  churches,  the  images 
were  replaced.  In  many  parishes  the  new  Prayer-book  was 
set  aside  and  the  Mass  restored.  The  Parliament  which  met 
in  October  annulled  the  laws  made  respecting  religion  during 
the  past  reign.  Gardiner  was  drawn  from  the  Tower.  Bon- 
ner  and  the  deposed  bishops  were  restored  to  their  sees. 
Ridley  with  the  others  who  had  displaced  them  were  again 
expelled,  and  Latimer  and  Cranmer  were  sent  to  the  Tower. 
But  with  the  restoration  of  the  system  of  Henry  the  Eighth 
the  popular  impulse  was  satisfied.  The  people  had  no  more 
sympathy  with  Mnry's  leanings  towards  Rome  than  with  the 
violence  of  the  Protestants.  The  Parliament  was  with  diffi- 
culty brought  to  set  aside  the  new  Prayer-book,  and  clung 
obstinately  to  the  Church-lands  and  to  the  Royal  Supremacy. 
Nor  was  England  more  favorable  to  the  marriage  on  which, 
from  motives  both  of  policy  and  religious  zeal,  Mary  had  set 


460  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

her  heart.  The  Emperor  had  ceased  to  be  the  object  of  hope 
or  confidence  as  a  mediator  who  would  at  once  purify  the 
Church  from  abuses  and  restore  the  unity  of 
Cliristendom  :  he  lmd  range.'!  himself  definitely 
on  the  side  of  the  Papacy  and  of  the  Council  of 
Trent;  and  the  cruelties  of  the  Inquisition  which  he  introduced 
into  Flanders  gave  a  terrible  indication  of  the  bigotry  which 
he  was  to  bequeath  to  his  House.  The  marriage  with  his 
son  Philip,  whose  hand  he  offered  to  his  cousin  Mary,  meant 
an  absolute  submission  to  the  Papacy,  and  the  undoing  not 
only  of  the  Protestant  reformation,  but  of  the  more  moderate 
reforms  of  the  New  Learning.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would 
have  the  political  advantage  of  securing  Mary's  throne  against 
the  pretensions  of  the  young  Queen  of  Scots,  Mary  Stuart, 
who  had  become  formidable  by  her  marriage  with  the  heir  of 
the  French  Crown  ;  and  whose  adherents'already  alleged  the 
illegitimate  birth  of  both  Mary  and  Elizabeth,  through  the 
annulling  of  their  mothers' .marriages,  as  a  ground  for  deny- 
ing their  right  of  succession.  To  the  issue  of  the  marriage 
he  proposed,  Charles  promised  the  heritage  of  the  Low 
Countries,  while  he  accepted  the  demand  made  by  Mary's 
ministers,  Bishop  Gardiner  of  Winchester,  and  by  the  Coun- 
cil, of  complete  independence  both  of  policy  and  action  on 
the  part  of  England,  in  case  of  such  a  union.  The  tempta- 
tion was  great,  and  Mary's  resolution  overleapt  all  obstacles. 
But  in  spite  of  the  toleration  which  she  had  promised,  and 
had  as  yet  observed,  the  announcement  of  her  design  drove 
the  Protestants  into  a  panic  of  despair.  Kisings  which  broke 
out  in  the  west  and  center  of  the  country  were  quickly  put 
down,  and  the  Duke  of  Suffolk,  who  appeared  in  arms  at  Lei- 
cester, was  sent  to  the  Tower.  The  danger  was  far  more 
formidable  when  the  dread  that  Spaniards  were  coming  "  to 
conquer  the  realm "  roused  Kent  into  revolt  under  Sir 
Thomas  Wyatt.  The  ships  in  the  Thames  submitted  to  be 
seized  by  the  insurgents.  A  party  of  the  trainbands  of 
London,  who  marched  under  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  against 
them,  deserted  to  the  rebels  in  a  mass  with  shouts  of  "A 
Wyatt  !  a  Wyatt  !  we  are  all  Englishmen  \"  Had  the  insur- 
gents moved  quickly  on  the  capital,  its  gates  would  at  once 
have  been  ilung  open  ami  success  would  have  been  assured. 
But  in  the  critical  moment  Mary  was  saved  by  her  queenly 


THE  MARTYRS.      1553   TO   1558.  461 

courage.  Riding  boldly  to  the  Guildhall  she  appealed  with 
"  a  man's  voice  "  to  the  loyalty  of  the  citizens,  and  when 
"\Vyatt  appeared  on  the  Southwark  bank  the  bridge  was 
secured.  The  issue  hung  on  the  question  which  side  London 
would  take ;  and  the  insurgent  leader  pushed  desperately  up 
the  Thames,  seized  a  bridge  at  Kingston,  threw  his  force 
across  the  river,  and  marched  rapidly  back  on  the  capital. 
The  night  march  along  miry  roads  wearied  and  disorganized 
his  men,  the  bulk  of  whom  were  cut  off  from  their  leader  by 
a  royal  force  which  had  gathered  in  the  fields  at  what  is  now 
Hyde  Park  Corner,  but  Wyatt  himself  with  a  handful  of  fol- 
lowers, pushed  desperately  on  to  Temple  Bar.  '•'  I  have  kept 
touch,"  he  cried  as  he  sank  exhausted  at  the  gate;  but  it 
was  closed,  his  adherents  within  were  powerless  to  effect 
their  promised  diversion  in  his  favor,  and  the  daring  leader 
was  seized  and  sent  to  the  Tower. 

The  courage  of  the  queen,  who  had  refused  to  fly  even 
while  the  rebels  were  marching  beneath  her  palace  walls,  was 
only  equaled  by  her  terrible  revenge.  The  hour  The  r^ 
was  come  when  the  Protestants  were  at  her  feet,  mission 
and  she  struck  without  mercy.  Lady  Jane,  her  toEcme. 
father,  her  husband,  and  her  uncle  atoned  for  the  ambition 
of  the  House  of  Suffolk  by  the  death  of  traitors.  Wyatt 
and  his  chief  adherents  followed  them  to  execution,  while 
the  bodies  of  the  poorer  insurgents  were  dangling  on  gibbets 
round  London.  Elizabeth,  who  had  with  some  reason  been 
suspected  of  complicity  in  the  insurrection,  was  sent  to  the 
Tower  ;  and  only  saved  from  death  by  the  interposition  of 
the  Council.  But  the  failure  of  the  revolt  not  only  crushed 
the  Protestant  party,  it  secured  the  marriage  on  which  Mary 
was  resolved.  She  used  it  to  wring  a  reluctant  consent  from 
the  Parliament,  and  meeting  Philip  at  Winchester  in  the 
ensuing  summer  became  his  wife.  The  temporizing  measures 
to  which  the  queen  had  been  forced  by  the  earlier  difficulties 
of  her  reign  could  now  be  laid  safely  aside.  Mary  was  re- 
solved to  bring  about  a  submission  to  Rome  ;  and  her  minister 
Gardiner  fell  back  on  the  old  ecclesiastical  order,  as  the 
moderate  party  which  had  supported  the  policy  of  Henry 
the  Eighth  saw  its  hopes  disappear,  and  ranged  himself 
definitely  on  the  side  of  a  unity  which  could  now  only  bo 
brought  about  by  a  reconciliation  with  the  Papacy.  The 


462  HISTORY  OP   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Spanish  match  was  hardly  concluded,  when  the  negotiations 
with  Eome  were  brought  to  a  final  issue.  The  attainder  of 
Reginald  Pole,  who  had  been  appointed  by  the  Pope  to  receive 
thQ,  submission  of  the  realm,  was  reversed  ;  and  the  Legate, 
who  entered  London  by  the  river  with  his  cross  gleaming 
from  the  prow  of  his  barge,  was  solemnly  welcomed  by  a 
compliant  Parliament.  The  two  Houses  decided  by  a  formal 
vote  to  return  to  the  obedience  of  the  Papal  See,  and  received 
on  their  knees  the  absolution  which  freed  the  realm  from  the 
guilt  incurred  by  its  schism  and  heresy.  But,  even  in  the 
hour  of  her  triumph,  the  temper  both  of  Parliament  and  the 
nation  warned  the  queen  of  the  failure  of  her  hope  to  bind 
England  to  a  purely  Catholic  policy.  The  growing  in- 
dependence of  the  two  Houses  was  seen  in  their  rejection  of 
measure  after  measure  proposed  by  the  Crown.  A  proposal 
to  oust  Elizabeth  from  the  line  of  succession  could  not  even 
be  submitted  to  the  Houses,  nor  could  their  assent  be  won  to 
the  postponing  of  her  succession  to  that  of  Philip.  Though 
the  statutes  abolishing  Papal  jurisdiction  in  England  were 
repealed,  they  rejected  all  proposals  for  the  restoration  of 
Church-lands  to  the  clergy.  A  proposal  to  renew  the  laws 
against  heresy  was  thrown  out  by  the  Lords,  even  after  the 
failure  of  Wyatt's  insurrection,  and  only  Philip's  influence 
secured  the  reenactment  of  the  statute  of  Henry  the  Fifth 
in  a  later  Parliament.  Nor  was  the  temper  of  the  nation 
at  large  less  decided.  The  sullen  discontent  of  London  com- 
pelled its  Bishop,  Bonner,  to  withdraw  the  inquisitorial  ar- 
ticles by  which  he  hoped  to  purge  his  diocese  of  heresy. 
Even  the  Council  was  divided  on  the  question  of  persecution, 
and  in  the  very  interests  of  Catholicism  the  Emperor  himself 
counseled  prudence  and  delay.  Philip  gave  the  same  counsel. 
But  whether  from  without  or  from  within,  warning  was  wasted 
on  the  fierce  bigotry  of  the  queen. 

It  was  a  moment  when  the  prospects  of  the  party  of  reform 
seemed  utterly  hopeless.  Spain  had  taken  openly  the  lead  in 
the  great  Catholic  movement,  and  England  was 
Denig  dragged,  however  reluctantly,  by  the  Spanish 
marriage  into  the  current  of  reaction.  Its  oppo- 
nents were  broken  by  the  failure  of  their  revolt,  and  un- 
popular through  the  memory  of  their  violence  and  greed. 
Now  that  the  laws  against  heresy  were  enacted,  Mary  pressed 


THE   MARTYRS.      1553   TO    1558.  463 

for  their  execution  ;  and  in  1555  the  opposition  of  her  coun- 
cilors was  at  last  mastered,  and  the  work  of  death  began. 
But  the  cause  which  prosperity  had  ruined  revived  in  the 
dark  hour  of  persecution.  If  ihe  Protestants  hud  not  known 
how  to  govern,  they  knew  how  to  die.  The  story  of  Rowland 
Taylor,  the  Vicar  of  Hadleigh,  tells  us  more  of  the  work 
which  was  now  begun,  and  of  the  effect  it  was  likely  to  pro- 
duce, than  pages  of  historic  dissertation.  Taylor,  who  as  a 
man  of  mark  had  been  one  of  the  first  victims  chosen  for  ex- 
ecution, was  arrested  in  London,  and  condemned  to  suffer  in 
his  own  parish.  His  wife,  "suspecting  that  her  husband 
should  that  night  be  carried  away"  had  waited  through  the 
darkness  with  her  children  in  the  porch  of  St.  Botolph's 
beside  Aldgate.  "Xow  when  the  sheriff  his  company  came 
against  St.  Botolph's  Church,  Elizabeth  cried,  saying,  '0 
my  dear  father  !  Mother  !  mother  !  here  is  my  father  led 
away!'  Then  cried  his  wife,  'Rowland,  Rowland,  where 
art  thou  ? ' — for  it  was  a  very  dark  morning,  that  the  one 
could  not  see  the  other.  Dr.  Taylor  answered,  '  I  am  here, 
dear  wife/  and  stayed.  The  sheriff's  men  would  have  led 
him  forth,  but  the  sheriff  said,  '  Stay  a  little,  masters,  I  pray 
you,  and  let  him  speak  to  his  wife.'  Then  came  she  to  him, 
and  he  took  his  daughter  Mary  in  his  arms,  and  he  and  his 
wife  and  Elizabeth  knelt  down  and  said  the  Lord's  prayer. 
At  which  sight  the  sheriff  wept  apace,  and  so  did  divers 
others  of  the  company.  After  they  had  prayed  he  rose  up 
and  kissed  his  wife  and  shook  her  by  the  hand,  and  said, 
'  Farewell,  my  dear  wife,  be  of  good  comfort,  for  I  am  quiet 
in  my  conscience  !  God  shall  still  be  afather  to  my  children.' 
.  .  .  Then  said  his  wife,  '  God  be  with  thee,  dear  Rowland  I 
I  will,  with  God's  grace,  meet  thee  at  Hadleigh.'  ...  All 
the  way  Dr.  Taylor  was  merry  and  cheerful  as  one  that 
accounted  himself  going  to  a  most  pleasant  banquet  or  bridal. 
.  .  .  Coming  within  two  miles  of  Hadleigh  he  desired  to 
light  off  his  horse,  which  done  he  leaped  and  set  a  frisk  or 
twain  as  men  commonly  do  fcr  dancing.  '  Why,  master 
Doctor,'  quoth  the  sheriff, '  how  do  you  now  ? '  He  answered, 
'  Well,  God  be  praised,  Master  Sheriff,  never  better  ;  for  now 
I  know  I  am  almost  at  home.  J  lack  not  past  two  stiles  to 
go  over,  and  I  am  even  at  my  Father's  house  !'  .  .  .  The 
streets  of  Uadleigh  wore  beset  on  both  sides  with  men  and 


HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

women  of  the  town  and  country  who  waited  to  see  hini; 
whom  when  they  beheld  so  led  to  death,  with  weeping  eyes 
and  lamentable  voices,  they  cried,  '  Ah,  good  Lord  !  there 
goeth  our  good  shepherd  from  us!''  The  journey  was  at 
last  over.  "'What  place  is  this,'  he  asked,  '  and  what 
meaneth  it  that  so  much  people  are  gathered  together  ?'  It 
was  answered,  'It  is  Old  ham  Common,  the  place  where  you 
must  suffer,  and  the  people  are  come  to  look  upon  you.' 
Then  said  he,  '  Thanked  be  God,  I  am  even  at  home  ! '  .  .  . 
But  when  the  people  saw  his  reverend  and  ancient  face,  with 
a  long  white  beard,  they  burst  out  with  weeping  tears  and 
cried,  saying,  '  God  save  thee,  good  Dr.  Taylor ;  God 
strengthen  thee  and  help  thee  ;  the  Holy  Ghost  comfort 
thee  ! '  He  wished,  but  was  not  suffered,  to  speak.  When 
he  had  prayed,  ho  went  to  the  stake  and  kissed  it,  Mid  set 
himself  into  a  pitch-barrel  which  they  had  set  for  him  to 
stand  on,  and  so  stood  with  his  back  upright  against  the 
stake,  with  his  hands  folded  together  and  his  eyes  towards 
heaven,  and  so  let  himself  be  burned."  One  of  the  exe- 
cutioners "  cruelly  cast  a  fagot  at  him,  which  hit  upon  his 
head  and  brake  his  face  that  the  blood  ran  down  his  visage. 
Then  said  Dr.  Taylor,  '  0  friend,  I  have  harm  enough — what 
needed  that  ?"  One  more  act  of  brutality  brought  his  suf- 
ferings to  an  end. — ei  So  stood  he  still  without  either  crying 
or  moving,  with  his  hands  folded  together,  till  Soyce  with  a 
halberd  struck  him  on  the  head  that  the  brains  fell  out,  and 
the  dead  corpse  fell  down  into  the  fire. 

The  terror  of  death  was  powerless  against  men  like  these. 
Bouner,  the  Bishop  of  London,  to  whom,  as  Bishop  of  the 

diocese  in  which    the    Council  sat,   its  victims 
Martyrs      were  genera^V  delivered  for  execution,  but  who, 

in  spite  of  the  nickname  and  hatred  which  his 
official  prominence  in  the  work  of  death  earned  him,  seems 
to  have  been  naturally  a  good-humored  and  merciful  man, 
asked  a  youth  who  was  brought  before  him  whether  he 
thought  he  could  bear  the  fire.  The  boy  at  once  held  his 
hand  without  flinching  in  the  flame  of  a  candle  which  stood 
by.  Eogers,  a  fellow-worker  with  Tyndale  in  the  translation 
of  the  Bible,  and  one  of  the  foremost  among  the  Protestant 
preachers,  died  bathing  his  hands  in  the  flame  "'  as  if  it  had 
been  in  cold  water."  Even  the  commonest  lives  gleamed 


THE  MARTYRS.      1553   TO  1558.  465 

for  a  moment  into  poetry  at  the  stake.  "Pray  for  me/' a 
boy,  William  Hunter,  who  had  been  brought  home  to  Brent- 
wood  to  suffer,  asked  of  the  bystanders.  "I  will  pray  no 
more  for  thee,"  one  of  them  replied,  "  than  I  will  pray  for  a 
dog.'|  "'Thei1/  saij  William,  'Son  of  God,  shine  upon 
me  ; '  and  immediately  the  sun  in  the  elements  shone  out  of 
a  dark  cloud  so  full  in  his  face  that  he  was  constrained  to 
look  another  way  ;  whereat  the  people  mused,  because  it  was 
so  dark  a  little  time  before."  The  persecution  fell  heavily 
on  London,  and  on  Kent,  Sussex,  and  the  Eastern  Counties, 
the  homes  of  the  mining  and  manufacturing  industries ;  a 
host  of  Protestants  were  driven  over  sea  to  find  refuge  at 
Strasbtirg  or  Geneva.  But  the  work  of  terror  failed  in  the 
very  ends  for  which  it  was  wrought.  The  old  spirit  of  in- 
solent defiance,  of  outrageous  violence,  was  roused  again  at 
the  challenge  of  persecution.  A  Protestant  hung  a  string  of 
puddings  round  a  priest's  neck  in  derision  of  his  beads.  The 
restored  images  were  grossly  insulted.  The  old  scurrilous 
ballads  were  heard  again  in  the  streets.  One  miserable 
wretch,  driven  to  frenzy,  stabbed  the  priest  of  St.  Margaret's 
as  he  stood  with  the  chalice  in  his  hand.  It  was  a  more 
formidable  sign  of  the  times  that  acts  of  violence  such  as 
these  no  longer  stirred  the  people  at  large  to  their  former 
resentment.  The  horror  of  the  persecution  left  no  room  for 
other  feelings.  Every  death  at  the  stake  won  hundreds  to 
the  cause  of  its  victims.  "  You  have  lost  the  hearts  of 
twenty  thousand  that  were  rank  Papists,"  a  Protestant  wrote 
to  Bonner,  "  within  these  twelve  months."  Bonner  indeed, 
never  a  very  zealous  persecutor,  was  sick  of  his  work  ;  and 
the  energy  of  the  bishops  soon  relaxed.  But  Mary  had  no 
thought  of  hesitation  in  the  course  she  had  begun.  "Bat- 
tling letters"  from  the  council  roused  the  lagging  prelates 
to  fresh  activity  and  the  martyrdoms  went  steadily  on.  Two 
prelates  had  already  perished  ;  Hooper,  the  Bishop  of  Glou- 
cester, had  been  burned  in  his  own  cathedral  city  ;  Ferrar,  the 
Bishop  of  St.  David's,  had  suffered  at  Caermarthen.  Lati- 
mer  and  Bishop  Ridley  of  London  were  now  drawn  from 
their  prison  at  Oxford.  "Play  the  man,  Master  KidK\." 
cried  the  old  preacher  of  the  It  >  for  mat  ion  as  the  flames  shot 
up  around  him;  "we  shall  this  day  light  such  a  caiidli-  l>y 
God's  grace  in  England  as  I  trust  shall  never  be  put  out." 
30 


466  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

One  victim  remained,  far  beneath  many  who  had  preceded 
him  in  character,  but  high  above  them  in  his  position  in  the 
Church  of  England.  The  other  prelates  who  had  suffered 
had  been  created  after  the  separation  from  Kome,  and  were 
hardly  regarded  as  bishops  by  their  opponents.  But,  what- 
ever had  been  his  part  in  the  schism,  Cranmer  had  received 
his  Pallium  from  the  Pope.  He  was,  in  the  eyes  of  all, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  the  successor  of  St.  Augustine 
and  of  St.  Thomas  in  the  second  see  of  Western  Chris- 
tendom. To  burn  the  Primate  of  the  English  Church  for 
heresy  was  to  shut  out  meaner  victims  from  all  hope  of 
escape.  But  revenge  and  religious  zeal  alike  urged  Mary  to 
bring  Cranmer  to  the  stake.  First  among  the  many  decisions 
in  which  the  Archbishop  had  prostituted  justice  to  Henry's 
will  stood  that  by  which  he  had  annulled  the  king's  marriage 
with  Catharine  and  declared  Mary  a  bastard.  The  last  of 
his  political  acts  had  been  to  join,  whether  reluctantly  or  no, 
in  the  shameless  plot  to  exclude  Mary  from  the  throne.  His 
great  position  too  made  him  more  than  any  man  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  religious  revolution  which  had  passed  over 
the  land.  His  figure  stood  with  those  of  Henry  and  of 
Cromwell  on  the  frontispiece  of  the  English  Bible.  The 
decisive  change  which  had  been  given  to  the  character  of  the 
Reformation  under  Edward  was  due  wholly  to  Cranmer.  It 
was  his  voice  that  men  heard  and  still  hear  in  the  accents  of 
the  English  Liturgy.  As  an  Archbish'op,  Cranmer's  judg- 
ment rested  with  no  meaner  tribunal  than  that  of  Rome, 
and  his  execution  had  been  necessarily  delayed  till  its  sen- 
tence could  be  given.  But  the  courage  which  he  had  shown 
since  the  accession  of  Mary  gave  way  the  moment  his  final 
doom  was  announced.  The  moral  cowardice  which  had  dis- 
played itself  in  his  miserable  compliance  with  the  lust  and 
despotism  of  Henry  displayed  itself  again  in  six  successive 
recantations  by  which  he  hoped  to  purchase  pardon.  But 
pardon  was  impossible ;  and  Cranmer's  strangely  mingled 
nature  found  a  power  in  its  very  weakness  when  he  was 
brought  into  the  church  of  St.  Mary  at  Oxford  to  repeat  his 
recantation  on  the  way  to  the  stake.  "  Now,"  ended  his 
address  to  the  hushed  congregation  before  him,  "now  I 
come  to  the  great  thing  that  troubleth  my  conscience  more 
than  any  other  thing  that  ever  1  said  or  did  in  my  life,  and 


THE   MARTYRS.      1553   TO   1558.  467 

that  is  the  setting  abroad  of  writings  contrary  to  the  truth  ; 
which  here  I  now  renounce  and  refuse  as  things  written  by 
my  hand  contrary  to  the  truth  which  I  thought  in  my  heart, 
and  written  for  fear  of  death  to  save  my  life,  if  it  might  be. 
And,  forasmuch  as  my  hand  otfended  in  writing  contrary  to 
my  heart,  my  hand  therefore  shall  be  the  first  punished  ;  for 
if  I  come  to  the  fire,  it  shall  be  the  first  burned."  "This 
was  the  hand  that  wrote  it,"  he  again  exclaimed  at  the  stake, 
"  therefore  it  shall  suffer  first  punishment ;  "  and  holding  it 
steadily  in  the  flanfe  "he  never  stirred  nor  cried "  till  life 
was  gone. 

It  was  with  the  unerring  instinct  of  a  popular  movement 
that,  among  a  crowd  of  far  more  heroic  sufferers,  the  Protes- 
tants fixed,  in  spite  of  his  recantations,  on  the  mar- 
tyrdom of  Cranmer  as  the  death-blow  to  Catho-  T^eJ)eath 
,  r  .._,,,_,  of  Hary. 

licism  in  England.     For  one  man  who  felt  within 

him  the  joy  of  Rowland  Taylor  at  the  prospect  of  the  stake, 
there  were  thousands  who  felt  the  shuddering  dread  of 
Oranmer.  The  triumphant  cry  of  Latimer  could  reach  only 
hearts  as  bold  as  his  own  ;  but  the  sad  pathos  of  the  Primate's 
humiliation  and  repentance  struck  chords  of  sympathy  and 
pity  in  the  hearts  of  all.  It  is  from  that  moment  that  we  may 
trace  the  bitter  remembrance  of  the  blood  shed  in  the  cause 
of  Home  ;  which,  however  partial  and  unjust  it  must  seem  to 
an  historic  observer,  still  lies  graven  deep  in  the  temper  of 
the  English  people.  The  overthrow  of  his  projects  for  the 
permanent  acquisition  of  England  to  the  House  of  Austria  had 
disenchanted  Philip  of  his  stay  in  the  realm  ;  and  on  the  dis- 
appearance of  all  hope  of  a  child,  he  had  left  the  country  in 
spite  of  Mary's  passionate  entreaties.  But  the  queen  strug- 
gled desperately  on.  She  did  what  was  possible  to  satisfy  the 
unyielding  Pope.  In  the  face  of  the  Parliament's  significant 
reluctance  even  to  restore  the  first-fruits  to  the  Church,  she 
refounded  all  she  could  of  the  abbeys  which  had  been  sup- 
pressed ;  the  greatest  of  these,  that  of  Westminster,  was  re- 
established in  1556.  Above  all,  she  pressed  on  the  work  of 
persecution.  It  had  spread  now  from  bishops  and  priests  to 
the  people  itself.  The  sufferers  were  sent  in  batches  to  the 
flames.  In  a  single  day  thirteen  victims,  two  of  them  women, 
were  burnt  at  Stratford-le-Bow.  Seventy-three  Protestants 
of  Colchester  were  dragged  through  the  streets  of  London, 


468  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

tied  to  a  single  rope.  A  new  commission  for  the  suppression 
of  heresy  was  exempted  by  royal  authority  from  all  restric- 
tions of  law  which  fettered  its  activity.  The  Universities 
were  visited  ;  and  the  corpses  of  foreign  teachers  who  hud 
found  a  resting  place  thei'e  under  Edward  were  torn  from 
their  graves  and  reduced  to  ashes.  The  penalties  of  martial 
law  were  threatened  against  the  possessors  of  heretical  books 
issued  from  Geneva ;  the  treasonable  contents  of  which 
indeed,  and  their  constant  exhortations  to  rebellion  and  civil 
war,  justly  called  for  stern  repression.  But  the  work  of  ter- 
ror broke  down  before  the  silent  revolt  of  the  whole  nation. 
Open  sympathy  began  to  be  shown  to  the  sufferers  for  con- 
science' sake.  In  the  three  and  a  half  years  of  the  persecu- 
tion nearly  three  hundred  victims  had  perished  at  the  stake. 
The  people  sickened  at  the  work  of  death.  The  crowd  round 
the  fire  at  Smithfield  shouted  "  Amen"  to  the  prayer  of  seven 
martyrs  whom  Bonner  had  condemned,  and  prayed  with  them 
that  God  would  strengthen  them.  A  general  discontent  was 
roused  when,  in  spite  of  the  pledges  given  at  her  marriage, 
Mary  dragged  England  into  a  war  to  support  Philip — who 
on  the  Emperor's  resignation  had  succeeded  to  his  dominions 
of  Spain,  Flanders,  and  the  New  World — in  a  struggle  against 
France.  The  war  ended  in  disaster.  With  characteristic 
secresy  and  energy,  the  Duke  of  Guise  flung  himself  upon 
Calais,  and  compelled  it  to  surrender  before  snccor  could 
arrive.  '*  The  chief  jewel  of  the  realm/'  as  Mary  herself 
called  it,  was  suddenly  reft  away  ;  and  the  surrender  of 
Guisnes,  which  soon  followed,  left  England  without  a  foot  of 
land  on  the  Continent.  Bitterly  as  the  blow  was  felt,  the 
Council,  though  passionately  pressed  by  the  queen,  could 
find  neither  money  nor  men  for  any  attempt  to  recover  the 
town.  The  forced  loan  to  which  she  resorted  came  in  slowly. 
The  levies  mutinied  and  dispersed.  The  death  of  Mary  alone 
averted  a  general  revolt,  and  a  burst  of  enthusiastic  joy  hailed 
the  accession  of  Elizabeth. 

Section  HI.— Elizabeth.    1558—1560. 

[Authorities.—  Camden's  "Life  of  Elizabeth."  For  ecclesiastical  matters, 
Strype's  "  Annals,"  his  lives  of  Parker.  Grlndal,  and  Whitgift,  and  the  "  Ziirich 
Letters  "  (Parker  Society),  are  important.  The  State  Papers  are  being  calendared 
for  the  Master  of  the  Rolls,  and  fresh  light  may  be  looked  for  from  the  Cecil 


ELIZABETH.   1558  TO  1560.  469 

Papers  and  the  documents  at  Simancas.  some  of  which  are  embodied  In  Mr. 
Froude's  "  History"  (vols.  vii.  to  xii.).  We  have  also  the  Burlelxh  Papers,  the 
Sidney  Papers,  the  Sadler  State  Papers,  the  Hardwicke  State  Papers,  letters  pub- 
lished by  Mr.  Wright  in  his  "  Elizabeth  and  her  Times,"  the  collections  of  MurJin, 
the  Egerton  Papers,  the  "  Letters  of  Elizabeth  and  James  VI.,"  published  by  Mr 
Bruce.  The  "  Papiers  d'Etat  "  of  Cardinal  Granvelle  and  the  French  despatches 
published  by  M.  Teulet  are  valuable.] 

Never  had  the  fortunes  of  England  sunk  to  a  lower  ebb 
than  at  the  moment  when  Elizabeth  mounted  the  throne. 
The  country  was  humiliated  by  defeat  and  brought 
to  the  verge  of  rebellion  by  the  bloodshed  and  Elizabeth, 
misgovernment  of  Mary's  reign.  The  old  social 
discontent,  trampled  down  for  a  time  by  the  horsemen  of 
Somerset,  remained  a  menace  to  public  order.  The  religious 
strife  had  passed  beyond  hope  of  reconciliation,  now  that  the 
reformers  were  parted  from  their  opponents  by  the  fires  of 
Smithfield  and  the  party  of  the  New  Learning  all  but  dis- 
solved. The  more  earnest  Catholics  were  bound  helplessly 
to  Rome.  The  temper  of  the  Protestants,  burned  at  home 
or  driven  into  exile  abroad,  had  become  a  fiercer  thing,  and 
the  Calvinistic  refugees  were  pouring  back  from  Geneva  with 
dreams  of  revolutionary  change  in  Church  and  State.  Eng- 
land, dragged  at  the  heels  of  Philip  into  a  useless  and  ruinous 
war,  was  left  without  an  ally  save  Spain  ;  while  France,  mis- 
tress of  Calais,  became  mistress  of  the  Channel.  Not  only 
was  Scotland  a  standing  danger  in  the  north,  through  the 
French  marriage  of  its  Queen  Mary  Stuart  and  its  consequent 
bondage  to  French  policy  ;  but  Mary  Stuart  and  her  husband 
now  assumed  the  style  atid  arms  of  English  sovereigns,  and 
threatened  to  rouse  every  Catholic  throughout  the  realm 
against  Elizabeth's  title.  In  presence  of  this  host  of  dangers 
the  country  lay  helpless,  without  army  or  fleet,  or  the  means 
of  manning  one,  for  the  treasury,  already  drained  by  the 
waste  of  Edward's  reign,  had  been  utterly  exhausted  by 
Mary's  restoration  of  the  Church-lands  in  possession  of  the 
Crown,  and  by  the  cost  of  her  war  with  France. 

England's  one  hope  lay  in  the  character  of  her  queen. 
Elizabeth  was  now  in  her  twenty-fifth  year.  Personally  sha 
had  more  than  her  mother's  beauty  ;  her  figure  was  command- 
ing, her  face  long  but  queenly  and  intelligent,  her  eyes  quick 
and  fine.  She  had  grown  up  amidst  the  liberal  culture  of 
Henry's  court  a  bold  horsewoman,  a  good  shot,  a  graceful 


470  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

dancer,  a  skilled  musician,  and  an  accomplished  scholar. 
She  studied  every  morning  the  Greek  Testament,  and  fol- 
lowed this  by  the  tragedies  of  Sophocles  or  orations  of  Demos- 
thenes, and  could  "  rub  up  her  rusty  Greek  "  at  need  to  bandy 
pedantry  with  a  Vice-Chancellor.  But  she  was  far  from 
being  a  mere  pedant.  The  new  literature  which  was  spring- 
ing up  around  her  found  constant  welcome  in  her  court.  She 
spoke  Italian  and  French  as  fluently  as  her  mother-tongue. 
She  was  familiar  with  Ariosto  and  Tasso.  Even  amidst  the 
affectation  and  love  of  anagrams  and  puerilities  which  sullied 
her  later  years,  she  listened  with  delight  to  the  "Faery 
Queen,"  and  found  a  smile  for  "  Master  Spenser  "  when  he 
appeared  in  her  presence.  Her  moral  temper  recalled  in  its 
strange  contrasts  the  mixed  blood  withiii  her  veins.  She  was 
at  once  the  daughter  of  Henry  and  of  Anne  Boleyn.  From 
her  father  she  inherited  her  frank  and  hearty  address,  her  love 
of  popularity  and  of  free  intercourse  with  the  people,her  daunt- 
less courage  and  her  amazing  self-confidence.  Her  harsh, man- 
like voice,  her  impetuous  will,  her  pride,  her  furious  outbursts 
of  anger  came  to  her  with  her  Tudor  blood.  She  rated  great 
nobles  as  if  they  were  schoolboys  ;  she  met  the  insolence  of 
Essex  with  a  box  on  the  ear;  she  would  break  now  and  then 
into  the  gravest  deliberations  to  swear  at  her  ministers  like  a 
fishwife.  But  strangely  in  contrast  with  the  violent  outlines 
of  her  Tudor  temper  stood  the  sensuous,  self-indulgent  nature 
she  derived  from  Anne  Boleyn.  Splendor  and  pleasure  were 
with  Elizabeth  the  very  air  she  breathed.  Her  delight  was 
to  move  in  perpetual  progresses  from  castle  to  castle  through 
a  series  of  gorgeous  pageants,  fanciful  and  extravagant  as  a 
caliph's  dream.  She  loved  gaiety  and  laughter  and  wit.  A 
happy  retort  or  a  finished  compliment  never  failed  to  win  her 
favor.  She  hoarded  jewels.  Her  dresses  were  innumerable. 
Her  vanity  remained,  even  to  old  age,  the  vanity  of  a  coquette 
in  her  teens.  No  adulation  was  too  fulsome  for  her,  no  flattery 
of  her  beauty  too  gross.  "  To  see  her  was  heaven,"  Hatton 
told  her,  "  the  lack  <of  her  was  hell."  She  would  play  with 
her  rings  that  her  courtiers  might  note  the  delicacy  of  her 
hands ;  or  dance  a  coranto  that  the  French  ambassador,  hid- 
den dexterously  behind  a  curtain,  might  report  her  spright- 
liness  to  his  master.  Her  levity,  her  frivolous  laughter,  her 
unwomanly  jests  gave  color  to  a  thousand  scandals.  Her 


ELIZABETH.      1558  TO   1560.  471 

character,  in  fact,  like  her  portraits,  was  utterly  without 
shade.  Of  womanly  reserve  or  self-restniint  she  knew  noth- 
ing. No  instinct  of  delicacy  veiled  the  voluptuous  temper 
which  had  broken  out  in  the  romps  of  her  girlhood  and 
showed  itself  almost  ostentatiously  throughout  her  later  life. 
Personal  beauty  in  a  man  was  a  sure  passport  to  her  liking. 
She  patted  handsome  young  squires  on  the  neck  when  they 
knelt  to  kiss  her  hand,  and  fondled  her  "  sweet  Robin/'  Lord 
Leicester,  in  the  face  of  the  court. 

It  was  no  wonder  that  the  statesmen  whom  she  outwitted 
held  Elizabeth  almost  to  the  last  to  be  little  more  than  a 
frivolous  woman,  or  that  Philip  of  Spain  wondered  how  '•  a 
wanton  "  could  hold  in  check  the  policy  of  the  Escurial. 
But  the  Elizabeth  whom  they  saw  was  far  from  being  all  of 
Elizabeth.  The  wilfulness  of  Henry,  the  triviality  of  Anne 
Boleyn  played  over  the  surface  of  a  nature  hard  as  steel,  a 
temper  purely  intellectual,  the  very  type  of  reason  untouched 
by  imagination  or  passion.  Luxurious  and  pleasure  loving 
as  she  seemed,  Elizabeth  lived  simply  and  frugally,  and  she 
worked  hard.  Her  vanity  and  caprice  had  no  weight  what- 
ever with  her  in  state  affairs.  The  coquette  of  the  presence- 
chamber  became  the  coolest  and  hardest  of  politicians  at  the 
council-board.  Fresh  from  the  flattery  of  her  courtiers,  she 
would  tolerate  no  flattery  in  the  closet  ;  she  was  herself  plain 
and  downright  of  speech  with  her  counselors,  and  she  looked 
for  a  corresponding  plainness  of  speech  in  return.  If  any 
trace  of  her  sex  lingered  in  her  actual  statesmanship,  it  was 
seen  in  the  simplicity  and  tenacity  of  purpose  that  often 
underlies  a  woman's  fluctuations  of  feeling.  It  was  this  in 
part  which  gave  her  her  marked  superiority  over  the  states- 
men of  her  time.  No  nobler  group  of  ministers  over  gathered 
round  a  council-board  than  those  who  gathered  round  the 
council-board  of  Elizabeth.  But  she  was  the  instrument  of 
none.  She  listened,  she  weighed,  she  used  or  put  by  the 
counsels  of  each  in  turn,  but  her  policy  as  a  whole  was  her 
own.  It  was  a  policy,  not  of  genius,  but  of  good  sense.  Her 
aims  were  simple  and  obvious  :  to  preserve  her  throne,  to 
keep  England  out  of  war,  to  restore  civil  and  religious  order. 
Something  of  womanly  caution  and  timidity  perhaps  backed 
the  passionless  indifference  with  which  she  set  aside  the 
larger  schemes  of  ambition  which  were  ever  opening  before 


472  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

tier  eyes.  She  was  resolute  in  her  refusal  of  the  Low  Coun- 
tries. She  rejected  with  a  laugh  the  offers  of  the  Prot- 
estants to  make  her  "head  of  the  religion"  and  "mistress 
of  the  seas."  But  her  amazing  success  in  the  end  sprang 
mainly  from  this  wise  limitation  of  her  aims.  She  had  a 
finer  sense  than  any  of  her  counselors  of  her  real  resources  ; 
she  knew  instinctively  how  far  she  could  go,  and  what  she 
could  do.  Her  cold,  critical  intellect  was  never  swayed  by 
enthusiasm  or  by  panic  either  to  exaggerate  or  to  under* 
estimate  her  risks  or  her  power. 

Of  political  wisdom  indeed  in  its  larger  and  more  generous 
sense  Elizabeth  had  little  or  none  ;  but  her  political  tact  was 
unerring.  She  seldom  saw  her  course  at  a  glance,  but  she 
played  with  a  hundred  courses,  fitfully  and  discursively,  as  a 
musician  runs  his  fingers  over  the  key-board,  till  she  hit 
suddenly  upon  the  right  one.  Her  nature  was  essentially 
practical  and  of  the  present.  She  distrusted  a  plan  in  fact 
just  in  proportion  to  its  speculative  range  or  its  outlook  into 
the  future.  Her  notion  of  statesmanship  lay  in  watching 
how  things  turned  out  around  her,  and  in  seizing  the  moment 
for  making  the  best  of  them.  A  policy  of  this  limited, 
practical,  tentative  order  was  not  only  best  suited  to  the 
England  of  her  day,  to  itj  small  resources  and  the  transitional 
character  of  its  religious  and  political  belief,  but  it  was  one 
eminently  suited  to  Elizabeth's  peculiar  powers.  It  was  a 
policy  of  detail,  and  in  details  her  wonderful  readiness  ana 
ingenuity  found  scope  for  their  exercise.  "No  War,  my 
Lords,"  the  queen  used  to  cry  imperiously  at  the  council- 
board,  "No  War  I"  but  her  hatred  of  war  sprang  less  from 
her  aversion  to  blood  or  to  expense,  real  as  was  her  aversion 
to  both,  than  from  the  fact  that  peace  left  the  field  open  to 
the  diplomatic  maneuvers  and  intrigues  in  which  she  ex- 
celled. Her  delight  in  the  consciousness  of  her  ingenuity 
broke  out  in  a  thousand  puckish  freaks,  freaks  in  which  one 
can  hardly  see  siny  purpose  beyond  the  purpose  of  cheer 
mystification.  She  reveled  in  "  bye- ways  "  and  "crooked 
ways."  She  played  with  grave  Cabinets  as  a  cat  plays 
with  a  mouse,  and  with  much  of  the  same  feline  delight  in 
the  mere  embarrassment  of  her  victims.  When  she  was 
-weary  of  mystifying  foreign  statesmen  she  turned  to  find 
-fresh  sport  in,  mystifying  her  own  ministers.  Had  Elizabeth 


ELIZABETH.   1558  TO  1560.  473 

•written  the  story  of  her  roign  she  would  have  prided  herself, 
not  on  the  triumph  of  England  or  the  ruin  of  Spain,  but  on 
the  skill  with  which  she  had  hoodwinked  and  outwitted  every 
statesman  in  Europe,  during  fifty  years.  Nor  was  her 
trickery  without  political  value.  Ignoble,  inexpressibly 
wearisome  us  the  Queen's  diplomacy  seems  to  us  now,  trac- 
ing it  as  we  do  through  a  thousand  despatches,  it  succeeded 
in  its  main  end.  It  gained  time,  and  every  year  that  was 
gained  doubled  Elizabeth's  strength.  Nothing  is  more  re- 
volting in  the  queen,  but  nothing  is  more  characteristic,  than 
her  shameless  mendacity.  It  was  an  age  of  political  lying, 
but  in  the  profusion  and  recklessness  of  her  lies  Elizabeth 
stood  without  u  peer  in  Christendom.  A  falsehood  was  to 
her  simply  an  intellectual  means  of  meeting  a  difficulty  ;  and 
the  ease  with  which  she  asserted  or  denied  whatever  suited 
her  purpose  was  only  equalled  by  the  cynical  indifference 
with  which  she  met  the  exposure  of  her  lies  as  soon  as  their 
purpose  was  answered.  The  same  purely  intellectual  view 
of  things  showed  itself  in  the  dexterous  use  she  made  of  her 
very  faults.  Her  levity  carried  her  gaily  over  moments  of 
detection  and  embarrassment  where  better  women  would 
have  died  of  shame.  She  screened  her  tentative  and  hesitat- 
ing statesmanship  under  the  natural  timidity  and  vacillation 
of  her  sex.  She  turned  her  very  luxury  and  sports  to  good 
account.  There  were  moments  of  grave  danger  in  her  reign 
when  the  country  remained  indifferent  to  it,i  perils,  as  it  saw 
the  queen  give  her  days  to  hawking  and  hunting,  and  her 
nights  to  dancing  and  plays.  Her  vanity  and  affectation, 
her  womanly  fickleness  and  caprice,  all  had  their  part  in  the 
diplomatic  comedies  she  played  with  the  successive  candi- 
dates for  her  hand.  If  political  necessities  made  her  life  a 
lonely  one,  she  had  at  any  rate  the  satisfaction  of  averting 
war  and  conspiracies  by  love  sonnets  and  romantic  interviews, 
or  of  gaining  a  year  of  tranquillity  by  the  dexterous  spinning 
out  of  a  flirtation. 

As  we  track  Elizabeth  through  her  tortuous  mazes  of  lying 
and  intrigue,  the  sense  of  her  greatness  is  almost  lost  in  a 
sense  of  contempt.  But  wrapped  as  they  were  in  a  cloud  of 
mystery,  the  aims  of  her  policy  were  throughout  temperate 
atid  simple,  and  they  were  pursued  with  a  singular  tenacity. 
The  sudden  acts  of  energy  which  from  time  to  time  broke 


474  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

her  habitual  hesitation  proved  that  it  was  no  hesitation  of 
weakness.  Elizabeth  could  wait  and  finesse ;  but  when  the 
hour  was  come  she  could  strike,  and  strike  hard.  Her  nat- 
ural temper  indeed  tended  to  a  rash  self-confidence  rather 
than  to  self-distrust.  She  had,  as  strong  natures  always  have, 
an  unbounded  confidence  in  her  luck.  "  Her  Majesty  counts 
much  on  Fortune/'  Walsingham  wrote  bitterly  ;  "  I  wish  she 
would  trust  more  in  Almighty  God."  The  diplomatists  who 
censured  at  one  moment  her  irresolution,  her  delay,  her 
changes  of  front,  censure  at  the  next  her  "  obstinacy/'  her 
iron  will,  her  defiance  of  what  seemed  to  them  inevitable 
ruin.  "  This  woman,"  Philip's  envoy  wrote  after  a  wasted 
remonstrance,  "this  woman  is  possessed  by  a  hundred  thou- 
sand devils."  To  her  own  subjects,  indeed,  who  knew  nothing 
of  her  maneuvers  and  retreats,  of  her  "  by-ways "  and 
"crooked  ways,"  she  seemed  the  embodiment  of  dauntless 
resolution.  Brave  as  they  were,  the  men  who  swept  the 
Spanish  Main  or  glided  between  the  icebergs  of  Baffin's  Bay 
never  doubted  that  the  palm  of  bravery  lay  with  their  queen. 
Her  steadiness  and  courage  in  the  pursuit  of  her  aims  was 
equaled  by  the  wisdom  with  which  she  chose  the  men  to  ac- 
complish them.  She  had  a  quick  eye  for  merit  of  any  sort, 
and  a  wonderful  power  of  enlisting  its  whole  energy  in  her 
service.  The  sagacity  which  chose  Cecil  and  Walsingham 
was  just  us  unerring  in  its  choice  of  the  meanest  of  her  agents. 
Her  success  indeed  in  securing  from  the  beginning  of  her 
reign  to  its  end,  with  the  single  exception  of  Leicester,  pre- 
cisely the  right  men  for  the  work  she  set  them  to  do  sprang 
in  great  measure  from  the  noblest  characteristic  of  her  intel- 
lect. If  in  loftiness  of  aim  her  temper  fell  below  many  of 
the  tempers  of  her  time,  in  the  breadth  of  its  range,  in  the 
universality  of  its  sympathy  it  stood  far  above  them  all. 
Elizabeth  could  talk  poetry  with  Spenser  and  philosophy  with 
Bruno ;  she  could  discuss  Euphuism  with  Lyly,  and  enjoy 
the  chivalry  of  Essex  ;  she  could  turn  from  talk  of  the  last 
fashions  to  pore  witli  Cecil  over  despatches  and  treasury 
books  ;  she  could  pass  from  tracking  traitors  with  Walsing- 
ham to  settle  points  of  doctrine  with  Parker,  or  to  calculate 
with  Frobisher  the  chances  of  a  northwest  passage  to  the 
Indies.  The  versatility  and  the  many-sidedness  of  her  mind 
enabled  her  to  understand  every  phase  of  the  intellectual  move- 


ELIZABETH.   1558  TO  1560.  475 

men*  of  her  day,  and  to  fix  by  a  sort  of  instinct  on  its  higher 
representatives.  But  the  greatness  of  the  queen  rests  above 
all  on  her  power  over  her  people.  We  have  had  grander  and 
nobler  rulers,  but  none  so  popular  as  Elizabeth.  The  passion 
of  love,  of  loyalty,  of  admiration  which  finds  its  most  per- 
fect expression  in  the  "  Faery  Queen,"  throbbed  as  intensely 
through  the  veins  of  her  meanest  subjects.  To  England, 
during  her  reign  of  half  a  century,  she  was  a  virgin  and  a 
Protestant  queen  ;  and  her  immorality,  her  absolute  want  of 
religious  enthusiasm,  failed  utterly  to  blur  the  brightness  of 
the  national  ideal.  Her  worst  acts  broke  fruitlesslv  against 
the  general  devotion.  A  Puritan,  whose  hand  she  "cut  off  in 
a  freak  of  tyrannous  resentment,  waved  his  hat  with  the  hand 
that  was  left,  and  shouted  "  God  save  Queen  Elizabeth  !" 
Of  her  faults,  indeed,  England  beyond  the  circle  of  her  court 
knew  little  or  nothing.  .The  shiftings  of  her  diplomacy  were 
never  seen  outside  the  royal  closet.  The  nation  at  large 
could  only  judge  her  foreign  policy  by  its  main  outlines,  by 
its  temperance  and  good  sense,  and  above  all  by  its  success. 
But  every  Englishman  was  able  to  judge  Elizabeth  in  her 
rule  at  home,  in  her  love  of  peace,  her  instinct  of  order,  the 
firmness  and  moderation  of  her  government,  the  judicious 
spirit  of  conciliation  and  compromise  among  warring  factions 
which  gave  the  country  an  unexampled  tranquillity  at  a  time 
when  almost  every  other  country  in  Europe  was  torn  with 
civil  war.  Every  sign  of  the  growing  prosperity,  the  sight 
of  London  as  it  became  the  mart  of  the  world,  of  stately  man- 
sions as  they  rose  on  every  manor,  told,  and  justly  told,  in 
Elizabeth's  favor.  In  one  act  of  her  civil  administration  she 
showed  the  boldness  and  originality  of  a  great  ruler  ;  for  the 
opening  of  her  reign  saw  her  face  the  social  difficulty  which 
had  so  long  impeded  English  progress,  by  the  issue  of  a  com- 
mission of  inquiry  which  ended  in  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem by  the  system  of  poor-laws.  She  lent  a  ready  patronage 
to  the  now  commerce  ;  she  considered  its  extension  and  pro- 
tection as  a  part  of  public  policy,  and  her  statue  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  London  Exchange  was  a  tribute  on  the  part  of  the 
merchant  class  to  the  interest  with  which  she  watched  and 
shared  personally  in  its  enterprises.  Her  thrift  won  a  gen- 
eral gratitude.  The  memories  of  the  Terror  and  of  the  Mar- 
tyrs threw  into  bright  relief  the  aversion  from  bloodshed 


476  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

which  was  conspicuous  in  her  earlier  reign,  and  never  wholly- 
wanting  through  its  fiercer  close.  Above  nil  there  was  a  gen- 
eral confidence  in  her  instinctive  knowledge  of  tha  national 
temper.  Her  finger  was  always  on  the  public  pulse.  She 
knew  exactly  when  she  could  resist  the  feeling  of  her  people, 
and  when  she  must  give  way  before  the  new  sentiment  of 
freedom  which  her  policy  unconsciously  fostered.  But  when 
she  retreated,  her  defeat  hud  all  the  grace  of  victory  ;  and 
the  frankness  and  unreserve  of  her  surrender  won  back  at 
once  the  love  that  her  resistance  had  lost.  Her  attitude  at 
home  in  fact  was  that  of  a  woman  whose  pride  in  the  well- 
being  of  her  subjects,  and  whose  longing  for  their  favor,  was 
the  one  warm  touch  in  the  coldness  of  her  natural  temper. 
If  Elizabeth  could  be  said  to  love  anything,  she  loved  Eng- 
land. "  Nothing,"  she  said  to  her  first  Parliament  in  words 
of  unwonted  fire,  "  nothing,  no  worldly  thing  under  the  sun, 
is  so  dear  to  me  as  the  love  and  good-will  of  my  subjects." 
And  the  love  and  good-will  which  were  so  dear  to  her  she 
fully  won. 

She  clung  perhaps  to  her  popularity  the  more  passionately 
that  it  hid  in  some  measure  from  her  the  terrible  loneliness 
of  her  life.  She  was  the  last  of  the  Tudors,  the  last  of 
Henry's  children  ;  and  her  nearest  relatives  were  Mary  Stuart 
and  the  House  of  Suffolk,  one  the  avowed,  the  other  the  secret 
claimant  of 'her,  throne.  Among  her  mother's  kindred  she 
found  but  a  single  cousin.  Whatever  womanly  tenderness 
she  had,  wrapt  itself  around  Leicester  ;  but  a  marriage  with 
Leicester  was  impossible,  and  every  other  union,  could  she 
even  have  bent  to  one,  was  denied  to  her  by  the  political 
difficulties  of  her  position.  The  one  cry  of  bitterness  which 
burst  from  Elizabeth  revealed  her  terrible  sense  of  the  soli- 
tude of  her  life.  "  The  Queen  of  Scots,"  she  cried  at  the 
birth  of  James,  "  has  a  fair  son,  and  I  am  but  a  barren  stock."' 
But  the  loneliness  of  her  position  only  reflected  the  loneliness 
of  her  nature.  She  stood  utterly  apart  from  the  world 
around  her,  sometimes  above  it,  sometimes  below  it,  but 
never  of  it.  It  was  only  on  its  intellectual  side  that  Elisabeth: 
touched  the  England  of  her  day.  All  its  moral  aspects  were 
simply  dead  to  her.  It  was  a  time  when  men  were  being 
lifted  into  nobleness  by  the  new  moral  energy  which  -seemed 
suddenly  to  pulse  through  the  whole  people,  when  honor  and 


ELIZABETH.   1558  TO  1560.  477 

enthusiasm  took  colors  of  poetic  beauty,  and  religion  became 
a  chivalry.  But  the  finer  sentiments  of  the  men  arouud  her 
touched  Elizabeth  simply  as  the  fair  tints  of  u  picture  would 
have  touched  her.  She  made  her  market  with  equal  in- 
difference out  of  the  heroism  of  William  of  Orange  or  the 
bigotry  of  Philip.  The  noblest  aims  and  lives  were  only 
counters  on  her  board.  She  was  the  one  soul  in  her  realm 
whom  the  news  of  St.  Bartholomew  stirred  to  no  thirst  for 
vengeance  ;  and  while  England  was  thrilling  with  its  triumph 
over  the  Armada,  its  queen  was  coolly  grumbling  over  the 
cost,  and  making  her  profit  out  of  the  spoiled  provisions 
she  had  ordered  for  the  fleet  that  saved  her.  To  the  voice  of 
gratitude,  indeed,  she  was  for  the  most  part  deaf.  She 
accepted  services  such  as  were  never  rendered  to  anv  other 
English  sovereign  without  a  thought  of  return.  AYalsinghiirn 
spent  his  fortune  in  saving  her  life  and  her  throne,  and  she 
left  him  to  die  a  beggar.  But,  as  if  by  a  strange  irony,  it  was 
to  this  very  want  of  sympathy  that  she  owed  some  of  the 
grander  features  of  her  character.  If  she  was  without  love 
she  was  without  hate.  She  cherished  no  petty  resentments ; 
she  never  stooped  to  envy  or  suspicion  of  the  men  who  served 
her.  She  was  indifferent  to  abuse.  Her  good-humor  was 
never  ruffled  by  the  charges  of  wantonness  and  cruelty  with 
which  the  Jesuits  filled  every  Court  in  Europe.  She  was  in- 
sensible to  fear.  Her  life  became  at  last  the  mark  for  assassin 
after  assassin,  but  the  thought  of  peril  was  the  one  hardest 
to  bring  home  to  her.  Even  when  the  Catholic  plots  broke 
out  in  her  very  household  she  would  listen  to  no  proposals  for 
the  removal  of  Catholics  from  her  court. 

It  was  this  moral  isolation  which  told  so  strangely  both  for 
good  and  for  evil  on  her  policy  towards  the  Church.     The 
young  queen  was  not  without  a  sense  of  religion.     EiiKlrth 
But  she  was  almost  wholly  destitute  of  spiritual     and  tie 
emotion,  or  of  any  consciousness  of  the  vast  ques-     dm.ch. 
tions  with  which  theology  strove  to  deal.     While  the  world 
around  her  was  being  swayed  more  and  more  by  theological 
beliefs  and  controversies,  Elizabeth  was  absolutely  untouched 
by  them.     She  was  a  child  of  the  Italian  Renascence  rather 
than  of  the  New  Leaning  of  Colet  or  Erasmus,  and  her  atti- 
tude towards  the  enthusiasm  of  her  time  was  that  of  Lorenzo 
de'  Medici  towards  Savonarola.     Her  rniud  was  unruffled  by 


178  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  spiritual  problems  which  were  vexing  the  minds  arotmd 
her  ;  to  Elizabeth  indeed  they  were  not  only  unintelligible, 
they  were  a  little  ridiculous.  She  had  the  same  intellectual 
contempt  for  the  superstition  of  the  Romanist  as  for  the  bigotry 
of  the  Protestant.  While  she  ordered  Catholic  images  to  be 
flung  into  the  fire,  she  quizzed  the  Puritans  as  "  brethren  in 
Christ."  But  she  had  no  sort  of  reglious  aversion  from  either 
Puritan  or  Papist.  The  Protestants  grumbled  at  the  Catholic 
nobles  whom  she  admitted  to  the  presence.  The  Catholics 
grumbled  at  the  Protestant  statesmen  whom  she  called  to  her 
council-board.  But  to  Elizabeth  the  arrangement  was  the  most 
natural  thing  in  the  world.  She  looked  at  theological  dif- 
ferences in  a  purly  political  light.  She  agreed  with  Henry  the 
Fourth  that  a  kingdom  was  well  worth  amass.  It  seemed  an 
obvious  thing  to  her  to  hold  out  hopes  of  conversion  as  a  means 
of  deceiving  Philip,  or  to  gain  a  point  in  negotiation  by  restor- 
ing the  crucifix  to  her  chapel.  The  first  interest  in  her  own 
mind  was  the  interest  of  public  order,  and  she  never  could  un- 
derstand how  it  could  fail  to  be  first  in  every  one's  mind.  Her 
ingenuity  set  itself  to  construct  a  system  in  which  ecclesiasti- 
cal unity  should  not  jar  against  the  rights  of  conscience  ;  a 
compromise  which  merely  required  outer  "conformity"  to 
the  established  worship  while,  as  she  was  never  weary  of  re- 
peating, it  "left  opinion  free."  She  fell  back  from  the  very 
first  on  the  system  of  Henry  the  Eighth.  "  I  will  do,"  she 
told  the  Spanish  ambassador,  "  as  my  father  did."  She  opened 
negotiations  with  the  Papal  See,  till  the  Pope's  summons  to 
submit  her  claim  of  succession  to  the  judgment  of  Rome  made 
compromise  impossible.  The  first  work  of  her  Parliament 
was  to  declare  her  legitimacy  and  title  to  the  crown,  to  restore 
the  royal  supremacy,  and  to  abjure  all  foreign  authority  and 
jurisdiction.  At  her  entry  into  London  Elizabeth  kissed  the 
English  Bible  which  the  citizens  presented  to  her  and 
promised  "diligently  to  read  therein."  Further  she  had  no 
personal  wish  to  go.  A  third  of  the  Council  and  at  least 
two-thirds  of  the  people  were  as  opposed  to  any  radical 
changes  in  religion  as  the  queen.  Among  the  gentry  the 
older  and  wealthier  were  on  the  conservative  side,  and  only 
the  younger  and  meaner  on  the  other.  But  it  was  soon 
necessary  to  go  further.  If  the  Protestants  were  the  less 
numerous,  they  were  the  abler  and  the  more  vigorous  party  ; 


ELIZABETH.   1558  TO  1560.  479 

and  the  exiles  who  returned  from  Geneva  brought  with  them 
a  fiercer  hatred  of  Catholicism.  To  every  Protestant  the  Mass 
was  identified  with  the  fires  of  Smithfield,  while  Edward's 
Prayer-book  was  hallowed  by  the  memories  of  the  Martyrs. 
But  if  Elizabeth  won  the  Protestants  by  an  Act  of  Uniformity 
which  restored  the  English  Prayer-book  and  enforced  its  use 
on  the  clergy  on  pain  of  deprivation,  the  alterations  she  made 
in  its  language  showed  her  wish  to  conciliate  the  Catholics  as 
far  as  possible.  She  had  no  mind  merely  to  restore  the  system 
of  the  Protectorate.  She  dropped  the  words  "  Head  of  the 
Church  "  from  the  royal  title.  The  forty-two  Article <  which 
Cranmer  had  drawn  up  were  left  in  abeyance.  If  Elizabeth 
had  had  her  will,  she  would  have  retained  the  celibacy  of  the 
clergy  and  restored  the  use  of  crucifixes  in  the  churches.  In 
part  indeed  of  her  effort  she  was  foiled  by  the  increased  bitter- 
ness of  the  reformers.  The  London  mob  tore  down  the 
crosses  in  the  streets.  Her  attempt  to  retain  the  crucifix  or 
enforce  tho  celibacy  of  the  priesthood  fell  dead  before  the 
opposition  of  the  Protestant  clergy.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
Marian  bishops,  with  a  single  exception,  discerned  the  Prot- 
estant drift  of  the  changes  she  was  making,  and  bore  im- 
prisonment and  deprivation  rather  than  accept  the  oath  re- 
quired by  the  Act  of  Supremacy.  But  to  the  mass  of  the 
nation  the  compromise  of  Elizabeth  seems  to  have  been  fairly 
acceptable.  The  bulk  of  the  clergy,  if  they  did  not  take  the 
oath,  practically  submitted  to  the  Act  of  Supremacy  and 
adopted  the  Prayer-book.  Of  the  few  who  openly  refused 
only  two  hundred  were  deprived,  and  many  went  unharmed. 
No  marked  repugnance  to  the  new  worship  was  shown  by  the 
people  at  large  ;  and  Elizabeth  was  able  to  turn  from  questions 
of  belief  to  the  question  of  order. 

She  found  in  Matthew  Parker,  whom  Pole's  death  enabled 
her  to  raise  to  the  see  of  Canterbury,  an  agent  in  the  reorgan- 
ization of  the  Church  whose  patience  and  moder- 
ation were  akin  to  her  own.     Theologically  the     Parker. 
Primate  was  a  moderate  man,  but  he  was  resolute 
to  restore  order  in  the  discipline  and  worship  of  the  Church. 
The  whole  machinery  of  English  religion   had  been    thrown 
out  of  gear  by  the  rapid  and  radical  changes  of  the  past  two 
reigns.     The  majority  of  the  parish  priests  were  still  Catholic 
in  heart  :  sometimes  mass  was  celebrated  at  the  parsouage 


HISTOHY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

for  the  more  rigid  Catholics,  and  the  new  communion  in 
church  for  the  more  rigid  Protestants.  Sometimes  both 
parties  knelt  together  at  the  same  altar-rails,  the  one  to  receive 
hosts  consecrated  by  the  priest  at  home  after  the  old  usage, 
the  other  wafers  consecrated  in  Church  after  the  new.  In 
many  parishes  of  the  north  no  change  of  service  was  made  at 
all.  On  the  other  hand,  the  new  Protestant  clergy  were  often 
unpopular,  and  roused  the  disgust  of  the  people  by  their 
violence  and  greed.  Chapters  plundered  their  own  estates 
by  leases  and  fines  and  by  felling  timber.  The  marriages  of 
the  clergy  became  a  scandal,  which  was  increased  when  the 
gorgeous  vestments  of  the  old  worship  were  cut  up  into 
gowns  and  bodices  for  the  priests'  wives.  The  new  sen  ices 
sometimes  turned  into  scenes  of  utter  disorder  where  the 
clergy  wore  what  dress  they  pleased  and  the  communicant 
stood  or  sat  as  he  liked  ;  while  the  old  altars  were  broken 
down  and  the  comrnunion-table  was  often  a  bare  board  upon 
trestles.  The  people,  naturally  enough,  were  found  to  be 
"utterly  devoid  of  religion,"  and  came  to  church  "  as  to  a 
May  game."  To  the  difficulties  which  Parker  found  in  the 
temper  of  the  reformers  and  their  opponents  new  difficulties 
were  added  by  the  freaks  of  the  queen.  If  she  had  no  con- 
victions, she  had  tastes ;  and  her  taste  revolted  from  the 
bareness  of  Protestant  ritual  and  above  all  from  the  marriage 
of  priests.  "  Leave  that  alone/'  she  shouted  to  Dean  Xowell 
from  the  royal  closet  as  he  denounced  the  use  of  images — 
"  stick  to  your  text,  Master  Dean,  leave  that  alone  ! "  "When 
Parker  was  firm  in  resisting  the  introduction  of  the  crucifix 
or  of  celibacy,  Elizabeth  showed  her  resentment  at  his  firm- 
ness by  an  insult  to  his  wife.  Married  ladies  were  addressed 
at  this  time  as  "Madam,"  unmarried  ladies  as  "  Mistress  ;" 
and  when  Mrs.  Parker  advanced  at  the  close  of  a  sumptuous 
entertainment  at  Lambeth  to  take  leave  of  the  queen, 
Elizabeth  feigned  a  momentary  hesitation.  "  M;:ckm,"  she 
said  at  last,  "  I  may  not  call  you,  and  Mistress  I  am  loth  to 
call  you  ;  however,  I  thank  you  for  your  good  cheer."  To 
the  end  of  her  reign  indeed  Elizabeth  remained  as  bold  a 
plunderer  of  the  wealth  of  the  bishops  as  either  of  her  pred- 
ecessors, and  carved  out  rewards  for  her  ministers  from  the 
Church-lands  with  a  queenly  disregard  of  the  rights  of 
property.  Lord  Burleigh  built  up  the  estate  of  the  house  of 


ELIZABETH.   1558  TO  1560.  481 

Cecil  out  of  the  demesnes  of  the  see  of  Peterborough.  The 
neighborhood  of  Hattoa  Garden  to  Ely  Place  recalls  the 
spoliation  of  another  bishopric  in  favor  of  the  queen's 
sprightly  chancellor.  Her  reply  to  the  bishop's  protest 
against  this  robbery  showed  what  Elizabeth  meant  by  her 
Ecclesiastical  Supremacy.  "  Proud  prelate,"  she  wrote, 
"  you  know  what  you  were  before  I  made  you  what  you  are  ! 
If  you  do  not  immediately  comply  with  my  request,  by  God 
I  will  unfrock  you."  But  freaks  of  this  sort  had  little  real 
influence  beside  the  steady  support  which  the  queen  gave  to 
the  Primate  in  his  work  of  order.  She  suffered  no  plunder 
save  her  own,  and  she  was  earnest  for  the  restoration  of  order 
and  decency  in  the  outer  arrangements  of  the  Church.  The 
vacant  sees  were  filled  for  the  most  part  with  learned  and  able 
men  ;  and  England  seemed  to  settle  quietly  down  in  a 
religious  peace. 

The  settlement  of  religion  however  was  not  the  only  press- 
ing care  which  met  Elizabeth  as  she  mounted  the  throne. 
The  country  was  drained  by  war  ;  yet  she  could 
only  free  ^herself  from  war,  and  from  the  depen-  Scotland, 
dence  on  Spain  which  it  involved,  by  acquiescing 
in  the  loss  of  Calais.  But  though  peace  was  won  by  the 
sacrifice,  France  remained  openly  hostile  ;  the  Dauphin  and 
his  wife,  Mary  Stuart,  had  assumed  the  arms  and  style  of 
King  and  Queen  of  England  ;  and  their  pretensions  be- 
came a  source  of  immediate  danger  through  the  presence 
of  a  French  army  in  Scotland.  To  understand,  however, 
what  had  taken  place  there  we  must  cursorily  review  the  past 
history  of  the  Northern  Kingdom.  From  the  moment  when 
England  finally  abandoned  the  fruitless  effort  to  subdue  it 
the  story  of  Scotland  had  been  a  miserable  one.  Whatever 
peace  might  be  concluded,  a  sleepless  dread  of  the  old  danger 
from  the  south  tied  the  country  to  an  alliance  with  France, 
which  dragged  it  into  the  vortex  of  the  Hundred  Years'  War. 
But  after  the  final  defeat  and  capture  of  David  in  the  field  of 
Neville's  Cross  the  struggle  died  down  on  both  sides  into 
marauding  forays  and  battles,  like  those  of  Otterburn  and 
Homildon  Hill,  in  which  alternate  victories  were  won  by  the 
feudal  lords  of  the  Scotch  or  English  border.  The  ballad  of 
"  Chevy  Chase  "  brings  home  to  us  the  spirit  of  the  contest, 
the  daring  and  defiance  which  stirred  Sidney's  heart  "  more 
3* 


482  HISTOEY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

than  with  a  trumpet/'  But  its  effect  on  the  internal  devel- 
opment of  Scotland  was  utterly  ruinous.  The  houses  of 
Douglas  and  of  March  which  it  raised  into  supremacy  only 
interrupted  their  strife  with  England  to  battle  fiercely  with 
one  another  or  to  coerce  their  king.  The  power  of  the  Crown 
sank  in  fact  into  insignificance  under  the  earlier  sovereigns 
of  the  line  of  Stuart  which  had  succeeded  to  the  throne  on 
the  extinction  of  the  male  line  of  Bruce.  Invasions  and  civil 
feuds  not  only  arrested  but  even  rolled  back  the  national  in- 
dustry and  prosperity.  The  country  was  a  chaos  of  disorder 
and  misrule,  in  which  the  peasant  and  the  trader  were  the 
victims  of  feudal  outrage.  The  Border  became  a  lawless 
land,  where  robbery  and  violence  reigned  utterly  without 
check.  So  pitiable  seemed  the  state  of  the  kingdom  that  the 
clans  of  the  Highlands  drew  together  at  last  to  swoop  upon 
it  as  a  certain  prey  ;  but  the  common  peril  united  the  fac- 
tions of  the  nobles,  and  the  victory  of  Harlaw  saved  the  Low- 
lands from  the  rule  of  the  Celt.  A  great  name  at  last  broke 
the  line  of  the  Scottish  kings.  Schooled  by  a  long  captivity 
in  England,  James  the  First  returned  to  his  realm  to  be  the 
ablest  of  her  rulers  as  he  was  the  first  of  her  poets.  In 
the  thirteen  years  of  a  short  but  wonderful  reign  justice  and 
order  were  restored  for  a  while,  the  Scotch  Parliament  organ- 
ized, the  clans  of  the  Highlands  assailed  in  their  own  fast- 
nesses and  reduced  to  swear  fealty  to  the  "  Snxon  "  king. 
James  turned  to  deal  with  the  great  houses,  but  feudal  vio- 
lence was  still  too  strong  for  the  hand  of  the  law,  and  a  band 
of  ruffians  who  burst  into  the  royal  chamber  left  the  king 
lifeless  with  sixteen  stabs  in  his  body.  His  death  was  the 
signal  for  a  struggle  between  the  House  of  Douglas  and  the 
Crown,  which  lasted  through  half  a  century.  Order,  how- 
ever, crept  gradually  in  ;  the  exile,  of  the  Douglases  left  the 
Scottish  monarchs  supreme  in  the  Lowlands  ;  while  their 
dominion  over  the  Highlands  was  secured  by  the  ruin  of  the 
Lords  of  the  Isles.  But  in  its  outer  policy  the  country  still 
followed  in  the  wake  of  France ;  every  quarrel  between 
French  king  and  English  king  brought  danger  with  it  on 
the  Scottish  border  ;  till  Henry  the  Seventh  bound  England 
and  Scotland  together  for  a  time  by  bestowing  in  1502  the 
hand  of  his  daughter  Margaret  on  the  Scottish  king.  The 
union  was  dissolved  however  by  the  strife  with  France  which. 


ELIZABETH.   1558  TO  1560.  483 

followed  the  accession  of  Henry  the  Eighth  ;  war  broke  out 
anew,  and  the  terrible  defeat  and  death  of  James  the  Fourth 
at  Floddeii  Field  involved  his  realm  in  the  turbulence  and 
misrule  of  a  minority.  His  successor  James  the  Fifth, 
though  nephew  of  the  English  king,  from  the  outset  of  his 
reign  took  up  an  attitude  hostile  to  England  ;  and  Church 
and  people  were  ready  to  aid  in  plunging  the  two  countries 
into  a  fresh  struggle.  His  defeat  at  Solway  Moss  brought 
the  young  king  broken-hearted  to  his  grave.  "  It  came 
with  a  lass,  and  it  will  go  with  a  lass,"  he  cried,  as  they 
brought  him  on  his  death-bed  the  news  of  Mary  Stuart's 
birth.  The  hand  of  his  infant  successor  at  once  became  the 
subject  of  rivalry  between  England  and  France.  Had  Mary, 
as  Henry  the  Eighth  desired,  been  wedded  to  Edward  the 
Sixth,  the  whole  destinies  of  Europe  might  have  been 
changed  by  the  union  of  the  two  realms  ;  but  the  recent 
bloodshed  had  embittered  Scotland,  and  the  high-handed 
way  in  which  Somerset  pushed  the  marriage  project  com- 
pleted the  breach.  Somerset's  invasion  and  victory  at  Pinkie 
Cleugli  only  enabled  Mary  of  Guise,  the  French  wife  of 
James  the  Fifth,  who  had  become  Regent  of  the  realm  at  his 
death,  to  induce  the  Scotch  estates  to  consent  to  the  union 
of  her  child  with  the  heir  of  the  French  crown,  the  Dauphin 
Francis.  From  that  moment,  as  we  have  seen,  the  claims  of 
the  Scottish  queen  on  the  English  throne  became  so  formid- 
able a  danger  as  to  drive  Mary  Tudor  to  her  marriage  with 
Philip  of  Spain.  But  the  danger  became  a  still  greater  one 
on  the  accession  of  Elizabeth,  whose  legitimacy  no  Catholic 
acknowledged,  and  whose  religions  attitude  tended  to  throw 
the  Catholic  party  into  her  rival's  hands. 

In  spite  of  the  peace  with  France,  therefore,  Francis  and 
Mary  persisted  in   their  pretensions ;  and  a  French   force 
landed  at  Leith,  with  the  connivance  of  Mary  of    la^beth 
Guise.     The  appearance  of  this  force  on  the  Bor-        end 
der  was  intended  to  bring  about  a  Catholic  rising.    Scotland. 
But  the  hostility  between  France  and  Spain  bound  Philip, 
for  the  moment,  to  the  support  of  Elizabeth  ;  and  his  influ- 
ence over  the  Catholics  secured  quiet  for  a  time.     The  queen, 
too,  played  with  their  hopes  of  a  religious  reaction  by  talk 
of, her  own  reconciliation  with  the  Papacy  and  admission  of 
a  Papal  legate  to  the  realm,  aud  by  plans  for  her  marriage 


484  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

with  an  Austrian  and  Catholic  prince.  Meanwhile  she  par- 
ried the  blow  in  Scotland  itself,  where  the  Eeformation  had 
begun  rapidly  to  gain  ground,  by  secretly  encouraging  the 
"  Lords  of  the  Congregation/'  as  the  nobles  who  headed  the 
Protestant  party  were  styled,  to  rise  against  the  Regent. 
Since  her  accession  Elizabeth's  diplomacy  had  gained  her  a 
year,  and  her  matchless  activity  had  used  the  year  to  good 
purpose.  Order  was  restored  throughout  England,  the 
Church  was  reorganized,  the  debts  of  the  Crown  were  in  part 
paid  off,  tlu  treasury  was  recruited,  a  navy  created,  and  a 
force  ready  for  action  in  the  north,  when  the  defeat  of  her 
Scotch  adherents  forced  her  at  last  to  throw  asi.le  the  mask. 
As  yet  she  stood  almost  alone  in  her  self-reliance.  Spain  be- 
lieved her  ruin  to  be  certain  ;  France  despised  her  chances  ; 
her  very  Council  was  in  despair.  The  one  minister  in  whom 
she  dared  to  confide  was  Cecil,  the  youngest  and  boldest  of 
her  advisers,  and  even  Cecil  trembled  for  her  success.  But 
lies  and  hesitation  were  no  sooner  put  aside  than  the  queen's 
vigor  and  tenacity  came  fairly  into  play.  At  a  moment  when 
13'Oysel,  the  French  commander,  was  on  the  point  of  crush- 
ing the  Lords  of  the  Congregation,  an  English  fleet  appeared 
suddenly  in  the  Forth  and- forced  the  Regent's  army  to  fall 
back  upon  Leith.  The  queen  made  a  formal  treaty  with  the 
Lords,  and  promised  to  assist  them  in  the  expulsion  of  the 
strangers.  France  was  torn  by  internal  strife,  and  could 
send  neither  money  nor  men.  In  March,  Lord  Grey  moved 
o'ver  the  border  with  8,000  men  to  join  the  Lords  of  the  Con- 
gregation in  the  siege  of  Leith.  The  Scots  indeed  gave  little 
aid  ;  and  an  assault  on  the  town  signally  failed.  Philip  too 
in  a  sudden  jealousy  of  Elizabeth's  growing  strength  de- 
manded the  abandonment  of  the  enterprise.  But  Elizabeth 
was  immovable.  Famine  did  its  work  better  than  the  sword  ; 
and  in  two  treaties  with  the  Scotch  and  English,  the  envoys 
of  Francis  and  Mary  at  last  promised  to  withdraw  the  French; 
and  leave  the  government  to  a  Council  of  the  Lords  ;  and 
acknowledged  Elizabeth's  title  to  her  throne.  A  Scotch  Par- 
liament at  once  declared  Calvinism  the  national  religion. 
Both  Act  and  Treaty  indeed  were  set  aside  by  Francis  and 
Mary,  but  Elizabeth's  policy  had  in  fact  broken  the  de- 
pendence of  Scotland  on  France,  and  bound  to  her  side  the 
strongest  and  most  vigorous  party  among  its  nobles. 


MARY  STUART. 
After  an  Uiiknowu  Painter,  Versailles  Gallery,  France. 


ENGLAND   AND  MARY  STUART.      15GO  TO   1572.      485 


Section  IV.— England  and  Mary  Stuart.    1560—1572. 

[Authorities.—  As  before.  Ranke's  "  English  History,"  "  History  of  the  Re- 
formation,"  by  Knox.  For  Mary  Stuart,  the  works  of  Buchanan  and  Leslie, 
Melville's  Memoirs,  collections  of  Keith  and  Anderson.  For  the  Dutch  revolt 
Motley's  "  Rise  ot  the  Dutch  Republic,"  and  "  History  of  the  United  Nether- 
lands."] 

The  issue  of  the  Scotch  war  revealed  suddenly  to  Europe 
the  vigor  of  Elizabeth,  and  the  real  strength  of  her  throne. 
Slie  had  freed  herself  from  the  control  of  Philip, 
she  had  defied  France,  she  had  averted  the  danger  «t  ^ 
from  the  north  by  the  creation  of  an  English  party 
among  the  nobles  of  Scotland.  The  same  use  of  religious 
divisions  gave  her  a  similar  check  on  the  hostility  of  France. 
The  Huguenots,  as  the  French  Protestants  were  called,  had 
become  a  formidable  party  under  the  guidance  of  the  Ad- 
miral Coligni,  and  the  defeat  of  their  rising  against  the 
family  of  the  Guises,  who  stood  at  the  head  of  the  French 
Catholics  and  were  supreme  at  the  Court  of  Francis  and 
Mary,  threw  them  on  the  support  and  alliance  of  Elizabeth. 
But  if  the  decisive  outbreak  of  the  great  religious  struggle, 
so  long  looked  for  between  the  Old  Faith  and  the  New,  gave 
Elizabeth  strength  abroad,  it  weakened  her  at  home.  Her 
Catholic  subjects  lost  all  hope  of  her  conversion  as  they  saw 
the  queen  allying  herself  with  Scotch  Calvinists  and  French 
Huguenots  ;  her  hopes  of  a  religious  compromise  in  matters 
of  worship  were  broken  by  the  issue  'of  a  Papal  brief  which 
forbade  attendance  at  the  English  service  ;  and  Philip  of 
Spain,  freed  like  herself  from  the  fear  of  France  by  its  re- 
ligious divisions,  had  less  reason  to  hold  the  English  Catho- 
lics in  check.  He  was  preparing,  in  fact,  to  take  a  new 
political  stand  as  the  patron  of  Catholicism  throughout  the 
world  ;  and  his  troops  were  directed  to  support  the  Guises 
in  the  civil  war  which  broke  out  after  the  death  of  Francis 
the  Second,  and  to  attack  the  heretics  wherever  they  might 
find  them.  "  Religion,"  he  told  Elizabeth,  "  was  being  made 
a  cloak  for  anarchy  and  revolution."  It  was  at  the  moment 
when  the  last  hopes  of  the  English  Catholics  were  dispelled 
by  the  queen's  refusal  to  take  part  in  the  Council  of  Trent 
that  Mary  Stuart,  whom  the  death  of  her  husband  had  left 
a  stranger  in  France,  lauded  at  Leith.  Girl  as  she  was,  and 


486  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

she  was  only  nineteen,  she  was  hardly  inferior  in  intellectual 
power  to  Elizabeth  herself,  while  in  fire  and  grace  and  bril- 
liancy of  temper  she  stood  high  above  her.  She  brought 
with  her  the  voluptuous  refinement  of  the  French  Renas- 
cence :  she  would  lounge  for  days  in  bed,  and  rise  only  at 
night  for  dances  and  music.  But  her  frame  was  of  iron, 
and  incapable  of  fatigue  ;  she  galloped  ninety  miles  after  her 
last  defeat  without  a  pause  save  to  change  horses.  She  loved 
risk  and  adventure  and  the  ring  of  arms  ;  as  she  rode  in  a 
foray  to  the  north,  the  grim  swordsmen  beside  her  heard  her 
wish  she  was  a  man,  "  to  know  what  life  it  was  to  lie  all  night 
in  the  fields,  or  to  walk  on  the  cawsey  with  a  Glasgow  buckler 
and  a  broadsword/'  But  in  the  closet  she  was  as  cool  and 
astute  a  politician  as  Elizabeth  herself  ;  with  plans  as  subtle, 
but  of  a  far  wider  and  grander  range  than  the  queen's. 
"  Whatever  policy  is  in  all  the  chief  and  best  practised  heads 
of  France,"  wrote  an  English  envoy,  "  whatever  craft,  false- 
hood, and  deceit  is  in  all  the  subtle  brains  of  Scotland,  is 
either  fresh  in  this  woman's  memory,  or  she  can  fetch  it  out 
with  a  wet  finger/'  Her  beauty,  her  exquisite  grace  of  man- 
ner, her  generosity  of  temper  and  warmth  of  affection,  her 
frankness  of  speech,  her  sensibility,  her  gaiety,  her  womanly 
tears,  her  manlike  courage,  the  play  and  freedom  of  her 
nature,  the  flashes  of  poetry  that  broke  from  her  at  every 
intense  moment  of  her  life,  flung  a  spell  over  friend  or  foe 
which  has  only  deepened  with  the  lapse  of  years.  Even  to 
Knollys,  the  sternest  Puritan  of  his  day,  she  seemed  in  her 
captivity  to  be  "'a  notable  woman."  "  She  seemeth  to  re- 
gard no  ceremonious  honor  besides  the  acknowledgment  of 
her  estate  royal.  She  showeth  a  disposition  to  speak  much, 
to  be  bold,  to  be  pleasant,  to  be  very  familiar.  She  showeth 
a  great  desire  to  be  avenged  on  her  enemies.  She  showeth  a 
readiness  to  expose  herself  to  all  perils  in  hope  of  victory. 
She  desireth  much  to  hear  of  hardiness  and  valiancy,  com- 
mending by  name  all  approved  hardy  men  of  her  country 
though  they  be  her  enemies,  and  shcconcealeth  no  cowardice 
even  in  her  friends."  As  yet  men  knew  nothing  of  the  stern 
bigotry,  the  intensity  of  passion,  which  lay  beneath  the  win- 
ning surface  of  Mary's  womanhood.  But  they  at  once  recog- 
nized her  political  ability.  -  She  had  seized  eagerly  on  the 
new  strength  which  was  given  her  by  her  husband's  death. 


ENGLAND   AND   MARY   STUART.      1560   TO   1572.      487 

Her  cause  was  no  longer  hampered,  either  in  Scotland  or  in 
England,  by  a  national  jealousy  of  French  interference.  It 
was  with  a  resolve  to  break  the  league  between  Elizabeth  and 
the  Scotch  Protestants,  to  unite  her  own  realm  around  her, 
and  thus  to  give  a  firm  base  for  her  intrigues  among  the 
English  Catholics,  that  Hary  landed  at  Leith.  The  effect 
of  her  presence  was  marvelous.  Her  personal  fascination 
revived  the  national  loyalty,  and  swept  all  Scotland  to  her 
feet.  Knox,  the  greatest  and  sternest  of  the  Calvinistic 
preachers,  alone  withstood  her  spell.  The  rough  Scotch 
nobles  owned  that  there  was  in  Mary  "some  enchantment 
whereby  men  are  bewitched."  A  promise  of  religious  tolera- 
tion united  her  subjects  in  support  of  the  claim  which  she 
advanced  to  be  named  Elizabeth's  successor.  But  the  ques- 
tion of  the  succession,  like  the  question  of  her  marriage,  was 
with  Elizabeth  a  question  cf  life  and  death.  Her  wedding 
with  a  Catholic  or  a  Protestant  suitor  would  have  been  equally 
the  end  of  her  system  of  balance  and  national  union,  a  signal 
for  the  revolt  of  the  party  which  she  disappointed  and  for 
the  triumphant  dictation  of  the  party  which  she  satisfied. 
"If  a  Catholic  prince  come  here,"  a  Spanish  ambassador 
wrote  while  pressing  an  Austrian  marriage,  "  the  first  Mass 
he  attends  will  be  the  signal  for  a  revolt."  It  was  so  with 
the  question  of  the  succession.  To  name  a  Protestant  suc- 
cessor from  the  House  of  Suffolk  would  have  driven  every 
Catholic  to  insurrection.  To  name  Mary  was  to  stir  Protes- 
tantism to  a  rising  of  despair,  and  to  leave  Elizabeth  at  the 
mercy  of  every  fanatical  assassin  who  wished  to  clear  the 
way  fora  Catholic  ruler.  "I  am  not  so  foolish,"  was  the 
queen's  reply  to  Mary,  "as  to  hang  a  winding-sheet  before 
my  eyes." 

But  the  pressure  on  her  was  great,  and  Mary  looked  to  the 
triumph  of  Catholicism  in  France  to  increase  the  pressure. 
It  was  this  which  drove  Elizabeth  to  listen  to  the 
cry  of  the  Huguenots  at  the  moment  when  they       j^681 
were  yielding  to  the  strength  of  the  Guises.     Hate 
war  as  she  might,  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  dragged  her 
into  the  great  struggle  ;  arid  in  spite  of  the  menaces  of  Philip, 
money  and  six  thousand  men  were  promised  to  the  aid  of  the 
Protestants  under  Conde.     But  a  fatal  overthrow  of  the  Hu- 
guenot army  at  Drcux  left  the  Guises  masters  of  France,  and 


488  HISTOUY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

brought  the  danger  to  the  very  doors  of  England.  The  hopes 
of  the  English  Catholics  rose  higher.  Though  the  Pope  de- 
layed to  issue  his  Bull  of  Despotism,  a  Papal  brief  pronounced 
joining  in  the  Common  Prayer  schismatic,  and  forbade  the 
attendance  of  Catholics  at  church.  With  the  issue  of  this 
brief  the  conformity  of  worship  which  Elizabeth  had  sought 
to  establish  came  to  an  end.  The  hotter  Catholics  withdrew 
from  church.  Heavy  fines  were  laid  on  them  as  recusants  ; 
fines  which,  as  their  numbers  increased,  became  a  valuable 
source  of  supply  for  the  exchequer.  But  no  fines  could  com- 
pensate for  the  moral  blow  which  their  withdrawal  dealt.  It 
was  the  beginning  of  a  struggle  which  Elizabeth  had  averted 
through  three  memorable  years.  Protestant  fanaticism  met 
Catholic  fanaticism.  The  tidings  of  Dreux  spread  panic 
through  the  realm.  Parliament  showed  its  terror  by  meas- 
ures of  a  new  severity.  "  There  has  been  enough  of  words," 
said  the  queen's  minister,  Sir  Francis  Knollys  ;  "it  were 
time  to  draw  sword."  The  sword  was  drawn  in  a  Test  Act, 
the  first  in  a  series  of  penal  statutes  which  weighed  upon  Eng- 
lish Catholics  for  two  hundred  years.  By  this  statute  an  oath 
of  allegiance  to  the  queen  and  abjuration  of  the  temporal  au- 
thority of  the  Pope  was  exacted  from  all  holders  of  office,  lay  or 
spiritual,  with  the  exception  of  peers.  Its  effect  was  J;o  place 
the  whole  power  of  the  realm  in  the  hands  either  of  Protes- 
tants, or  of  Catholics  who  accepted  Elizabeth's  legitimacy  and 
her  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  in  the  teeth  of  the  Papacy. 
Caution  indeed  was  used  in  applying  his  test  to  the  laity,  but 
pressure  was  more  roughly  put  on  the  clergy.  Many  of  the 
parish  priests,  though  they  had  submitted  to  the  use  of  the 
Prayer  Book,  had  not  taken  the  oath  prescribed  by  the  Act 
of  Uniformity.  As  yet  Elizabeth  had  cautiously  refused  to 
allow  any  strict  inquiry  into  their  opinions.  But  a  commis- 
sion was  now  opened  by  her  order  at  Lambeth,  with  the  Pri- 
mate at  its  head,  to  enforce  the  Act ;  while  thirty-nine  of  the 
Articles  clrawn  up  under  Edward"  were  adopted  as  a  standard 
of  faith,  and  acceptance  of  them  demanded  of  the  clergy. 

It  is  possible  that  Elizabeth  might  have  clung  to  her  older 
policy  of  conciliation  had  she  foreseen  how  suddenly  the  dan- 
ger that  appalled  her  was  to  pass  away.     At  this 
cris'13  sue  wus  a^e'  as  lisna^  *' to  connt  on  For- 
tune/'   The  assassination  of  the  Duke  of  Guise 


ENGLAND  AND   MARY   STUART.      1560  TO  1572.      489 

broke  up  his  party  ;  a  policy  of  moderation  and  balance 
prevailed  at  the  French  Court;  Catharine  of  Medicis  was 
now  supreme,  and  her  aim  was  still  an  aim  of  peace. 
The  queen's  good  hick  was  checkered  by  a  merited  hum- 
iliation. She  hud  sold  her  aid  to  the  Huguenots  in  their 
hour  of  distress  at  the  price  of  the  surrender  of  Havre,  and 
Havre  was  again  wrested  from  her  by  the  reunion  of  the 
French  parties.  Peace  with  France  in  the  following  spring 
secured  her  a  year's  respite  from  her  anxieties ;  and  Mary 
was  utterly  foiled  in  her  plan  for  bringing  the  pressure 
of  a  united  Scotland,  backed  by  France,  to  bear  upon 
her  rival.  But  the  defeat  only  threw  her  on  a  yet  more 
formidable  scheme.  She  was  weary  of  the  mask  of  religious 
indifference  which  her  policy  had  forced  her  to  wear  with  the 
view  of  securing  the  general  support  of  her  subjects.  She  re- 
solved now  to  appeal  to  the  English  Catholics  on  the  ground 
of  Catholicism.  Next  to  the  Scottish  queen  in  the  line  of 
blood  stood  Henry  Stuart.  Lord  Darnley,  a  son  of  the  Count- 
ess of  Lennox,  and  grandson  of  Margaret  Tudor  by  her  sec- 
ond marriage  with  the  Earl  of  Angus,  as  Mary  was  her  grand- 
child by  Margaret's  first  marriage  with  James  the  Fourth. 
Though  the  house  of  Lennox  conformed  to  the  new  system 
of  English  worship,  its  sympathies  were  known  to  be  Catholic, 
and  the  hopes  of  the  Catholics  wrapped  themselves  round  its 
heir.  It  was  by  a  match  with  Henry  Stuart  that  Mary  now 
determined  to  unite  the  forces  of  Catholicism.  The  match 
was  regarded  on  all  sides  as  a  challenge  to  Protestantism. 
Philip  had  till  now  looked  upon  Mary's  system  of  toleration, 
and  on  her  hopes  from  France  with  equal  suspicion.  But  he 
now  drew  slowly  to  her  side.  "She  is  the  one  gate,"  he 
owned,  "  through  which  religion  can  be  restored  to  England. 
All  the  rest  are  closed."  It  was  in  vaiu  that  Elizabeth  strove 
to  prevent  the  marriage  by  a  threat  of  war,  or  by  secret  plots 
for  the  seizure  of  Mary,  and  the  driving  of  Darnley  back  over 
the  border.  The  Lords  of  the  Congregation  woke  with  ft 
start  from  their  confidence  in  the  queen,  and  her  half-brother, 
Lord  James  Stuart,  better  known  as  Earl  of  Murray,  mus- 
tered his  Protestant  confederates.  But  their  revolt  was 
hardly  declared  when  Mary  marched  on  them  with  pistols  in 
her  belt,  and  drove  their  leaders  helplessly  over  the  border.  A 
rumor  spread  that  she  was  in  league  with  Spain  and  with 


490  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

France,  where  the  influences  of  the  Guises  were  again  strong. 
Elizabeth  took  refuge  in  the  meanest  dissimulation,  while 
the  announcement  of  Mary's  pregnancy  soon  gave  her  a 
strength  which  swept  aside  Philip's  counsels  of  caution  and 
delay.  "  With  the  help  of  God  and  of  your  Holiness,"  Mary 
wrote  to  the  Pope,  "I  will  leap  over  the  wall."  Rizzio,  an 
Italian  who  had  counseled  the  marriage,  still  remained  her 
adviser,  and  the  daring  advice  he  gave  fell  in  with  her  natural 
temper.  She  demanded  a  recognition  of  her  succession.  She 
resolved  in  the  coming  parliament  to  restore  Catholicism  in 
Scotland  ;  and  to  secure  the  banishment  of  Murray  and  his 
companions.  The  English  Catholics  of  the  North  were  ready 
to  revolt  as  soon  as  she  was  ready  to  aid  them.  No  such  dan- 
ger had  ever  threatened  Elizabeth  ns  this,  but  again  she  could 
"  trust  to  Fortune."  Mary  had  staked  all  on  her  union  with 
Darnley,  and  yet  only  a  few  months  had  passed  since  her 
wedding  day  when  men  saw  that  she  "  hated  the  king."  The 
boy  turned  out  a  dissolute,  insolent  husband  ;  and  Mary's 
scornful  refusal  of  his  claim  of  the  "  crown  matrimonial,"  a 
refusal  which  Darnley  attributed  to  Rizzio's  counsels,  drove 
his  jealousy  to  madness.  At  the  very  moment  when  the 
queen  revealed  the  extent  of  her  schemes  by  her  dismissal  of 
the  English  ambassador,  the  young  king,  followed  by  his 
kindred,  the  Douglases,  burst  into  her  chamber,  dragged 
Rizzio  from  her  presence,  and  stabbed  him  brutally  in  an 
outer  chamber.  The  darker  features  of  Mary's  character  were 
now  to  develop  themselves.  Darnley,  keen  as  was  her  thirst 
for  vengeance  on  him,  was  needful  to  the  triumph  of  her 
political  aims.  She  masked  her  hatred  beneath  a  show  of 
affection,  which  succeeded  in  severing  the  wretched  boy  from 
hi^  fellow-conspirators,  and  in  gaining  his  help  in  an  escape 
to  Dun  bar.  Once  free,  she  marched  in  triumph  on  Edin- 
burgh at  the  head  of  eight  thousand  men  under  the  Earl  of 
Bothwell,  while  Morton,  Ruthven,  andLindesay  fled  in  terror 
over  the  border.  With  wise  dissimulation,  however,  she  fell 
back  on  her  system  of  religious  toleration.  But  her  intrigues 
with  the  English  Catholics  were  never  interrupted,  and  her 
court  was  full  of  refugees  from  the  northern  counties. 
"Your  actions,"  Elizabeth  wrote,  in  a  sudden  break  of  fierce 
candor,  "  are  as  full  of  venom  as  your  words  are  of  honey.* 
The  birth  of  her  child,  the  future  James  the  Sixth  of  Scot- 


ENGLAND   AND  MARY  STUART.      1560  TO   1572.      491 

land  and  First  of  England,  doubled  Mary's  strength.  "Your 
friends  are  so  increased,"  her  ambassador  wrote  to  her  from 
England,  "  that  many  whole  shir.es  are  ready  to  rebel,  and 
their  captains  named  by  election  of  the  nobility."  The  anx- 
iety of  the  English  parliament  which  met  at  this  crisis  proved 
that  the  danger  was  felt  to  be  real.  The  Houses  saw  but  one 
way  of  providing  against  it ;  and  they  renewed  their  uppeal 
for  the  queen's  marriage  and  for  a  settlement  of  the  succes- 
sion. As  we  have  seen,  both  of  these  measures  involved  even 
greater  dangers  than  they  averted  ;  but  Elizabeth  stood  alone 
in  her  resistance  to  them.  To  settle  the  succession  was  at 
once  to  draw  the  sword.  The  queen,  therefore,  on  this  point 
stood  firm.  The  promise  to  marry,  which  she  gave  after  a 
furious  burst  of  anger,  she  was  no  doubt  resolved  to  evade  as 
she  had  evaded  it  before.  But  the  quarrel  with  the  Com- 
mons which  followed  on  her  prohibition  of  any  debate  on  the 
succession,  a  quarrel  to  which  we  shall  recur,  at  a  later  time, 
hit  Elizabeth  hard.  It  was  ''secret  foes  at  home"  she  told 
the  Commons  as  their  quarrel  passed  away  in  a  warm  recon- 
ciliation, "  who  thought  to  work  mo  that  mischief  which 
never  foreign  enemies  could  bring  to  pass,  which  is  the 
hatred  of  my  Commons.  Do  you  think  that  either  I  am  so 
unmindful  of  your  surety  by  succession,  wherein  is  all  my 
care,  or  that  I  went  about  to  break  your  liberties  ?  No  !  It 
never  was  my  meaning  ;  but  to  stay  you  before  you  fell  into 
the  ditch."  It  was  impossible  for  her  however  to  explain  the 
real  reasons  for  her  course,  and  the  dissolution  of  Parliament 
left  her  face  to  face  with  a  national  discontent  added  to  the 
ever-deepening  peril  from  without. 

One   terrible   event  suddenly  struck   light    through  t!ie 
gathering  clouds.     Mary  had  used  Darnley  as  a  tool  to  effect 
the  ruin   of   his  confederates  and  to  further  her 
policy,  but  since  his  snare  in  Rizzio's  murder  she     j£ur*er>ey 
had  loathed  and  avoided  him.     Ominous   words 
dropped  from  her  lips.     "Unless  s!io    were   freed   of  him 
some  way,"  she  said,  "  she  had  no  pleasure  to  live."     Her 
purpose  of  vengeance  was  quickened  by  her  passion  for  the 
Earl  of  Both  well,  the  boldest  and  most  unscrupulous  of  the 
border  nobles.     The  earl's  desperate  temper  shrank  from  no 
obstacles  to  a  iv.ion  with  the  queen.      Divorce  would   free 
him  from  his  own  wife.     Daruley  might  be  struck  down  bj 


492  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

a  conspiracy  of  the  lords  whom  he  had  deserted  and  betrayed, 
and  who  still  looked  on  him  as  their  bitterest  foe.  The 
exiled  nobles  were  recalled  ;  there  were  dark  whispers  among 
the  lords.  The  terrible  secret  of  the  deed  which  followed  is 
still  wrapt  in  a  cloud  of  doubt  and  mystery  which  will  prob- 
ably never  be  wholly  dispelled.  The  queen's  mood  seemed 
suddenly  to  change.  Her  hatred  to  Darnley  passed  all  at 
once  into  demonstrations  of  the  old  affection.  He  had 
fallen  sick  with  vice  and  misery,  and  she  visited  him  on  his 
sick  bed,  and  persuaded  him  to  follow  her  to  Edinburgh. 
She  visited  him  again  in  a  ruinous  and  lonely  house  near  the 
palace,  in  which  he  was  lodged  by  her  order,  kissed  him  as 
she  bade  him  farewell,  and  rode  gaily  back  to  a  wedding- 
dance  at  Holyrood.  Two  hours  after  midnight  an  awful  ex- 
plosion shook  the  city  ;  and  the  burghers  rushed  out  from  the 
gates  to  find  the  house  of  Kirk  o'  Field  destroyed,  and 
Darnley 's  body  dead  beside  the  ruins.  The  murder  was  un- 
doubtedly the  deed  of  Both  well.  His  servant,  it  was  soon 
known,  had  stored  the  powder  beneath  the  king's  bed- 
chamber; and  the  earl  had  watched  without  the  walls  till 
the  deed  was  done.  But,  in  spite  of  gathering  suspicion  and 
of  a  charge  of  murder  made  formally  against  him  by  Lord 
Lennox,  no  serious  steps  were  taken  to  investigate  the  crime  ; 
and  a'  rumor  that  Mary  proposed  to  marry  the  murderer 
drove  her  friends  to  despair.  Her  "agent  in  England  wrote  to 
her  that'"  if  she  married  that  man  she  would  lose  the  favor 
of  God,  her  own  reputation,  and  the  hearts  of  all  England, 
Ireland,  and  Scotland."  But  every  stronghold  in  the  king- 
dom was  soon  placed  in  Bothwell's  hands,  and  this  step  was 
the  prelude  to  a  trial  and  acquittal  which  the  overwhelming 
force  of  his  followers  in  Edinburgh  turned  into  a  bitter 
mockery.  A  shameless  suit  for  his  divorce  removed  the 
last  obstacle  to  his  ambition  ;  and  a  seizure  of  the  queen  as 
she  rode  to  Linlithgow  was  followed  by  a  marriage.  In  a 
month  more  all  was  over.  The  horror  at  such  a  marriage 
with  a  man  fresh  from  her  husband's  blood  drove  the  whole 
nation  to  revolt.  Its  nobles,  Catholic  as  well  as  Protestant, 
gathered  in  arnn  at  Stirling  ;  and  their  entrance  into  Edin- 
burgh roused  the  capital  into  insurrection.  Mary  and  the 
Earl  advanced  with  a  fair  force  to  Seton  to  encounter  the 
Lords ;  but  their  men  refused  tafight,  and  Bothwell  galloped 


ENGLAND   AND   MAUV    STUAKT.      1560   TO   1572.      493 

off  into  lifelong  exile,  while  the  queen  was  brought  back  to 
Edinburgh  in  a  frenzy  of  despair,  tossing  back  wild  words  of 
defiance  to  the  curses  of  the  crowd.  From  Edinburgh  she 
was  carried  a  prisoner  to  the  fortress  of  Lochleven  ;  as  the 
price  of  her  life  she  was  forced  to  resign  her  crown  in  favor 
of  her  child,  and  to  name  her  brother,  the  Earl  of  Murray, 
who  was  now  returning  from  France,  as  regent.  In  July  the 
baba  was  solemnly  crowned  as  James  the  Sixth. 

For  the  moment  England  was  saved,  but  the  ruin  of 
Mary's  hopes  hud  not  come  one  instant  too  soon.  The  great 
3onftict  between  the  two  religions,  which  had 
begun  in  France,  was  slowly  widening  into  a 
general  struggle  over  the  whole  face  of  Europe. 
For  four  yeurs  the  balanced  policy  of  Catharine  of  Medicis 
had  wrested  a  truce  from  both  Catholics  and  Huguenots, 
but  Conde  and  the  Guises  again  rose  in  arms,  each  side 
eager  to  find  its  profit  in  the  new  troubles  which  now 
broke  out  in  Flanders.  For  the  long  persecution  of  the 
Protestants  there,  and  the  unscrupulous  invasion  of  the 
constitutional  liberties  of  the  Province  by  Philip  of  Spain, 
had  at  last  stirred  the  Netherlands  to  revolt  ;  and  the  insur- 
rection was  seized  by  Philip  as  a  pretext  for  dealing  a  blow 
he  had  long  meditated  at  the  growing  heresy  of  this  portion 
of  his  dominions.  At  the  moment  when  Mary  entered  Loch- 
leven, the  Duke  of  Alva  was  starting  with  an  army  of  ten 
thousand  men  on  his  march  to  the  Low  Countries  ;  and  with 
easy  triumph  over  their  insurgent  forces  began  the  terrible 
series  of  outrages  and  massacres  which  have  made  his  name 
infamous  in  history.  No  event  could  be  more  embarrassing 
to  Elizabeth  than  the  arrival  of  Alva  in  Flanders.  His  ex- 
tirpation of  heresy  there  would  prove  the  prelude  of  his 
co-operation  with  the  Guises  in  the  extirpation  of  heresy  in 
France.  Without  counting,  too,  this  future  danger,  the 
triumph  of  Catholicism  and  the  presence  of  a  Catholic  army 
in  a  country  so  closely  connected  with  England  at  once  re- 
vived the  dreams  of  a  Catholic  rising  against  her  throne ; 
while  the  news  of  Alva's  massacres  stirred  in  every  one  of  her 
Protestant  subjects  a  thirst  for  revenge  which  it  was  hard  to 
hold  in  check.  Yet  to  strike  a  blow  at  Alva  was  impossible, 
for  Antwerp  was  the  great  mirt  of  English  trade,  ftnd  a  stop- 
page of  the  trade  with  Flanders,  such  as  war  would  bring 


•494  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

about,  would  have  broken  half  ^the  merchants  in  London. 
Everyday  was  deepening  the  perplexities  of  Elizabeth,  when 
Mary  succeeded  in  making  her  escape  from  Lochleven. 
Defeated  at  Langside,  where  the  energy  of  Murray  promptly 
crushed  the  rising  of  the  Catholic  nobles  in  her  support,  she 
abandoned  all  hope  of  Scotland  ;  and  changing  her  designs 
with  the  rapidity  of  genius,  she  pushed  in  a  light  boat  across 
the  Solway,  and  was  safe  before  evening  fell  in  the  castle  of 
Carlisle.  The  presence  of  Alva  in  Flanders  was  a  far  less 
peril  than  the  presence  of  Mary  in  Carlisle.  To  retain  her 
in  England  was  to  furnish  a  center  for  revolt  ;  Mary  herself 
indeed  threatened  that  "if  they  kept  her  prisoner  they 
should  have  enough  to  do  with  her."  Her  ostensible  demand 
was  for  English  aid  in  her  restoration  to  the  throne,  or  for  a 
free  passage  to  France  :  but  compliance  with  the  last  request 
wduld  have  given  the  Guises  a  terrible  weapon  against  Eliza- 
beth and  have  ensured  a  new  French  intervention  in  Scot- 
laud,  while  to  restore  her  by  arms  to  the  crown  she  had  lost 
was  impossible.  Till  Mary  was  cleared  of  guilt,  Murray 
would  hear  nothing  of  her  return,  and  Mary  refused  to  sub- 
mit to  such  a  trial  as  would  clear  her.  So  eager,  however, 
was  Elizabeth  to  get  rid  of  the  pressing  peril  of  her  presence 
in  England,  that  Mary's  refusal  to  submit  to  any  trial  only 
drove  her  to  fresh  devices  for  her  restoration.  She  urged 
upon  Murray  the  suppression  of  the  graver  charges,  and 
upon  Mary  the  leaving  Murray  in  actual  possession  of  the 
royal  power  as  the  price  of  her  return.  Neither  however 
would  listen  to  terms  which  sacrificed  both  to  Elizabeth's 
self-interest ;  the  Regent  persisted  in  charging  the  queen 
with  murder  and  adultery,  while  Mary  refused  either  to 
answer  or  to  abdicate  in  favor  of  her  infant  son.  The  triumph 
indeed  of  her  bold  policy  was  best  advanced,  as  the  queen  of 
Scots  had  no  doubt  foreseen,  by  simple  inaction.  Her  mis- 
fortunes, her  resolute  denials,  were  gradually  wiping  away 
the  stain  of  her  guilt,  and  winning  back  the  Catholics  of 
England  to  her  cause.  Elizabeth  "  had 'the  wolf  by  the  ears," 
while  the  fierce  contest  which  Alva's  presence  roused  in  the 
Netherlands  and  in  France  was  firing  the  temper  of  the  two 
great  parties  in  England. 

In  the  Court,  as  in  the  country,  the  forces  of  progress  and 
of  resistance  stood  at  last  in  sharp  and  declared  opposition  to 


ENGLAND   AND   MARY   STUART.      1560   TO   1572.      495 

each  other.  Cecil  at  the  head  of  the  Protestants  demanded 
a  general  alliance  with  the  Protestant  churches  throughout 
Europe,  a  war  in  the  Low  Countries  against  The 
Alva,  and  unconditional  surrender  of  Mary  to  her  Catholic 
Scotch  subjects  for  the  punishment  she  deserved.  Bevolto. 
The  Catholics  on  the  other  hand,  backed  by  the  mass  of  the 
Conservative  party  with  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  at  its  head,  and 
supported  by  the  wealthier  merchants  who  dreaded  the  ruin 
of  the  Flemish  trade,  were  as  earnest  in  demanding  the  dis- 
missal of  Cecil  and  the  Protestants  from  the  council-board,  a 
steady  peace  with  Spain,  and,  though  less  openly,  a  recogni- 
tion of  Mary's  succession.  Elizabeth  was  driven  to  temporize 
as  before.  She  refused  Cecil's  counsels  ;  but  she  sent  money 
and  arms  to  Conde,  and  hampered  Alva  by  seizing  treasure 
on  its  way  to  him,  and  by  pushing  the  quarrel  even  to  a 
temporary  embargo  on  shipping  either  side  the  sea.  She 
refused  the  counsels  of  Norfolk  ;  but  she  would  hear  nothing 
of  a  declaration  of  war,  or  give  any  judgment  on  the  charges 
against  the  Scottish  queen,  or  recognize  the  accession  of 
James  in  her  stead.  The  effect  of  Mary's  presence  in  England 
was  seen  in  conspiracies  of  Norfolk  with  the  Northern  Earls 
and  with  Spain.  Elizabeth,  roused  to  her  danger,  struck 
quick  and  hard.  Mary  Stuart  was  given  in  charge  to  Lord 
Huntingdon.  Arundel,  Pembroke,  and  Lumley  were  secured 
and  Norfolk  sent  to  the  Tower.  But  the  disasters  of  the 
Huguenots  in  France,  and  the  news  brought  by  a  papal  envoy 
that  a  Bull  of  Deposition  against  Elizabeth  was  ready  at 
Rome,  goaded  the  great  Catholic  lords  to  action,  and  brought 
about  the  rising  of  the  houses  of  Neville  and  of  Percy.  The 
entrv  of  the  Earls  of  Northumberland  and  Westmoreland 
into'Dprham  proved  the  signal  for  revolt.  The  Bible  and 
Praver-book  were  torn  to  pieces,  and  Mass  said  once  more  at 
the'altar  of  Durham  Cathedral,  before  the  Earls  pushed  on 
to  Doncastcr  with  an  army  which  soon  swelled  to  thousands 
of  men.  Their  cry  was  "  to  reduce  all  causes  of  religion  to 
the  old  custom  and  usage  ;  and  the  Earl  of  Sussex,  her 
general  in  the  north,  wrote  frankly  to  Elizabeth  that  "  there 
were  not  ten  gentlemen  in  Yorkshire  that  did  allow  [approve] 
her  proceedings  in  the  cause  of  religion."  But  he  was  as 
loyal  ns  he  was  frank,  and  held  York  stoutly  while  the  queen 
ordered  Mary's  hasty  removal  to  a  new  prison  at  Coventry. 


496  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

The  storm  however  broke  as  rapidly  as  it  had  gathered.  The 
mass  of  the  Catholics  throughout  the  country  made  no  sign  ; 
and  the  Earls  no  sooner  halted  irresolute  in  presence  of  this 
unexpected  inaction  than  their  army  caught  the  panic  and 
dispersed.  Northumberland  and  Westmoreland  fled,  and 
were  followed  in  their  flight  by  Leonard  Ducresof  Nawoith, 
while  their  miserable  adherents  paid  for  their  disloyalty  in 
bloodshed  and  ruin.  The  ruthless  measures  of  repression 
which  closed  this  revolt  were  the  first  breach  in  the  clemency 
of  Elizabeth's  rule.  But  they  were  signs  of  terror  which 
were  not  lost  on  her  opponents.  It  was  the  general  inaction 
of  the  Catholics  which  had  foiled  the  hopes  of  the  northern 
Earls  ;  and  Home  now  did  its  best  to  stir  them  to  activity  by 
publishing  the  Bull  of  Excommunication  and  Deposition 
against  the  queen,  which  had  been  secretly  issued  in  the 
preceding  year,  and  was  found  nailed  in  a  spirit  of  ironical 
defiance  on  the  Bishop  of  London's  door.  The  Catholics  of 
the  North  withdrew  stubbornly  from  the  national  worship. 
Everywhere  the  number  of  recusants  increased.  Intrigues 
were  busier  than  ever.  The  regent  Murray  was  assassinated, 
and  Scotland  plunged  into  war  between  the  adherents  of 
Mary  and  those  of  her  son.  From  the  defeated  Catholics 
Mary  turned  again  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  who  stood  at  the 
head  of  the  Conservative  peers.  Norfolk  had  acquiesced  in 
the  religious  compromise  of  the  queen,  and  professed  himself 
a  Protestant  while  he  intrigued  with  the  Catholic  party. 
He  trusted  to  carry  the  English  nobles  with  him  in  pressing 
for  his  marriage  with  Mary,  a  marriage  which  should  seem 
to  take  her  out  of  the  hands  of  French  and  Catholic  in- 
triguers, to  make  her  an  Englishwoman,  and  to  settle  the 
vexed  question  of  the  succession  to  the  throne.  His  dreams 
of  such  a  union  with  Mary  in  the  preceding  year  had  been 
detected  by  Cecil,  and  checked  by  a  short  sojourn  in  the 
Tower;  but  his  correspondence  with  the  qneen  was  renewed 
on  his  release,  and  ended  in  an  appeal  to  Philip  for  the  inter- 
vention of  a  Spanish  army.  At  the  head  of  this  appeal  stood 
the  name  of  Mary  ;  while  Norfolk's  name  was  followed  by 
those  of  many  lords  of  "  the  old  blood/'  as  the  prouder  peers 
styled  themselves  ;  and  the  significance  of  the  request  was 
heightened  by  gatherings  of  Catholic  refugees  at  Antwerp 
round  the  fugitive  leaders  of  the  Northern  Kevolt.  Enough 


THE   ENGLAND   OP   ELIZABETH.  497 

of  those  conspiracies  was  discovered  to  rouse  a  fresh  ardor 
in  the  menaced  Protestants.  The  Parliament  met  to  pass  an 
act  of  attainder  against  the  Northern  Earls,  and  to  declare 
the  introduction  of  Papal  Bulls  into  the  country  an  act  of 
high  treason.  The  rising  indignation  against  Mary,  as  "  the 
daughter  of  Debate,  who  discord  fell  doth  sow,"  was  shown 
in  a  statute,  which  declared  any  person  who  laid  claim  to  the 
crown  during  the  queen's  lifetime  incapable  of  ever  suc- 
ceeding to  it.  The  disaffection  of  the  Catholics  was  met  by 
imposing  on  all  magistrates  and  public  officers  the  obligation 
of  subscribing  to  the  Articles  of  Faith,  a  measure  which  in 
fact  transferred  the  administration  of  justice  and  public 
order  to  their  Protestant  opponents.  Meanwhile  Norfolk's 
treason  ripened  into  an  elaborate  plot.  Philip  had  promised 
aid  should  the  revolt  actually  break  out;  but  the  rlue  to 
these  negotiations  had  long  been  in  Cecil's  hands,  and  before 
a  single  step  could  be  taken  towards  the  practical  realization 
of  his  schemes  of  ambition,  they  were  foiled  by  Norfolk's 
arrest.  With  his  death  and  that  of  Northumberland,  who 
followed  him  to  the  scaffold,  the  dread  of  revolt  within  the 
realm  which  had  so  long  hung  over  England  passed  quietly 
away.  The  failure  of  the  two  attempts  not  only  showed  the 
weakness  and  disunion  of  the  party  of  discontent  and  reaction, 
but  it  revealed  the  weakness  of  all  party  feeling  before  the 
rise  of  a  national  temper  which  was  springing  naturally  out 
of  the  peace  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  and  which  a  growing  sense 
of  danger  to  the  order  and  prosperity  around  it  was  fast 
turning  into  a  passionate  loyalty  to  the  queen.  It  was  not 
merely  against  Cecil's  watchfulness  or  Elizabeth's  cunning 
that  Mary  and  Philip  and  the  Per3ies  dashed  themselves  in 
vain  ;  it  was  against  a  uew  England. 


Section  V.— The  England  of  Elizabeth. 

[Authorities.— For  our  constitutional  history  we  have  D'Ewes'  Journals  and 
Townshend's  "Journal  of  Parliamentary  Proceedings  from  1585  to  1001,"  the  first 
detaileJ  account  we  possess  of  th  j  proceedings  of  our  House  of  Commons.  .The 
general  survey  given  by  Hallam  ("  Constitutional  History  ")  Is  as  judicious  as  it 
is  able.  MacPherson  in  his  "  Annals  of  Commerce  "  gives  details  of  the  expansion 
of  English  trade :  and  Hakluyt's  "Collection  of  Voyages"  tells  of  its  activity. 
Some  valuable  details  are  a-idel  by  Mr.  Froude.  The  general  literary  history  le 
given  by  Craik  ("  History  of  English  Literature"),  who  has  devoted  a  separate 
work  to  Spenser  and  his  times ;  and  the  sober  but  narrow  estimate  of  Mr.  IhuUuu 
32 


498  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

f"  Literary  History  ")  may  be  contrasted  with  the  more  brilliant  though  lest 
balanced  comments  of  M.  Taine  ou  the  writers  of  tlie  Renascence.  A  crowd  of 
biographers  mark  the  new  importance  of  individual  life  and  action.] 

"  I  have  desired/'  Elizabeth  said  proudly  to  her  Parliament, 
"  to  have  the  obedience  of  my  subjects  by  love,  and  not  by 
Elizabeth  compulsion."  It  was  a  love  fairly  won  by  justice 
and  the  and  good  government.  Buried  as  she  seemed  in 
Poor  Laws.  foreign  negotiations  and  intrigues,  Elizabeth  was 
above  all  an  English  sovereign.  She  devoted  herself  ably  and 
energetically  to  the  task  of  civil  administration.  At  the  first 
moment  of  relief  from  the  pressure  of  outer  troubles,  she 
faced  the  two  main  causes  of  internal  disorder.  The  debase- 
ment of  the  coinage  was  brought  to  an  end  in  1560.  In  1561, 
a  commission  was  issued  to  inquire  into  the  best  means  of 
facing  the  problem  of  social  discontent.  Time,  and  the  na- 
tural development  of  new  branches  of  industry,  were  work- 
ing quietly  for  the  relief  of  the  glutted  labor-market ;  but  a 
vast  mass  of  disorder  still  existed  in  England,  which  found  a 
constant  ground  of  resentment  in  the  enclosures  and  evictions 
which  accompanied  the  progress  of  agricultural  change.  It 
was  on  this  host  of  "  broken  men  "  that  every  rebellion  could 
count  for  support ;  their  mere  existence  indeed  was  an  en- 
couragement to  civil  war  ;  while  in  peace  their  presence  was 
felt  in  the  insecurity  of  life  and  property,  in  gangs  of  ma- 
rauders which  held  whole  counties  in  terror,  and  in  "sturdy 
beggars"  who  stripped  travelers  on  the  road.  Under 
Elizabeth  as  under  her  predecessors  the  terrible  measures  of 
repression,  whose  uselessness  More  had  in  vain  pointed  out, 
went  pitilessly  on  :  we  find  the  magistrates  of  Somersetshire 
capturing  a  gang  of  a  hundred  at  a  stroke,  hanging  fifty  at 
once  on  the  gallows,  and  complaining  bitterly  to  the  Council 
of  the  necessity  for  waiting  till  the  Assizes  before  they  could 
enjoy  the  spectacle  of  the  fifty  others  hanging  beside  them. 
But  the  Government  were  dealing  with  the  difficulty  in  a 
wiser  and  more  effectual  way.  The  old  powers  to  enforce  la- 
bor on  the  idle  and  settlement  on  the  vagrant  class  were  con- 
tinued ;  and  each  town  and  parish  was  held  responsible  for 
the  relief  of  its  indigent  and  disabled  poor,  as  well  as  for  the 
employment  of  able-bodied  mendicants.  But  a  more  efficient 
machinery  was  gradually  devised  for  carrying  out  the  relief 
and  employment  of  the  poor.  Funds  for  this  purpose  had 


THE  ENGLAND   OP  ELIZABETH.  499 

been  provided  by  the  collection  of  alms  in  church  ;  but  the 
mayor  of  each  town  and  the  church  wardens  of 'each  country 
parish  were  now  directed  to  draw  up  lists  of  all  inhabitants 
able  to  contribute  to  such  a  fund,  and  on  a  persistent  refusal 
the  justices  in  sessions  were  empowered  to  assess  the  offender 
at  a  fitting  sum  and  to  enforce  its  payment  by  imprisonment. 
The  principles  embodied  in  these  measures,  that  of  local 
responsibility  for  local  distress,  and  that  of  a  distinction 
between  the  pauppr  and  the  vagabond,  were  more  clearly  de- 
fined in  a  statute  of  1572.  By  this  Act  the  justices  in  the 
country  districts  and  mayors  and  other  officers  in  towns  were 
directed  to  register  the  impotent  poor,  to  settle  them  in 
fitting  habitations  and  to  assess  all  inhabitants  for  their  sup- 
port. Overseers  were  appointed  to  enforce  and  superintend 
their  labor,  for  which  wool,  hemp,  flax,  or  other  stuff  was  to 
be  provided  at  the  expense  of  the  inhabitants,  and  houses  of 
correction  were  established  in  every  county  for  obstinate  vaga- 
bonds or  for  paupers  refusing  to  work  at  the  overseer's  bid- 
ding. A  subsequent  Act  transferred  to  these  overseers  the 
collection  of  the  poor  rate,  and  powers  were  given  to  bind 
poor  children  as  apprentices,  to  erect  buildings  for  the  im- 
provident poor,  and  to  force  the  parents  and  children  of  such 
paupers  to  maintain  them.  The  well-known  Act  which  ma- 
tured and  finally  established  this  system,  the  43d  of  Elizabeth, 
remained  the  base  of  our  system  of  pauper-administration 
until  a  time  within  the  recollection  of  living  men.  Whatever 
flaws  a  later  experience  has  found  in  these  measures,  their 
wise  and  humane  character  formed  a  striking  contrast  to  the 
legislation  which1  had  degraded  our  statute-book  from  the 
date  of  the  Statute  of  Laborers ;  and  their  efficacy  at  the 
time  was  proved  by  the  cessation  of  the  social  danger  against 
which  they  were  intended  to  provide. 

Its  cessation,  however,  was  owing,  not  merely  to  law,  but  to 
the  natural  growth  of  wealth  and  industry  throughout  the 
country.      The   change  in  the  mode  of  cultiva-    Pngnu 
tion,    whatever    social   embarrassment  it    might      of  the 
bring    about,   undoubtedly   favored    production.     Country. 
Not  only  was  a  larger  capital  brought  to  bear  upon  the  land, 
but  the  mere  change  in  the  system  introduced  a  taste  for  new 
and  better  modes  of  agriculture  ;  the  breed  of  horses  and  of 
cattle  was  improved,  and  a  far  greater  use  made  of  manure 


500  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

and  dressings.  One  acre  under  the  new  system  produced, 
it  was  said,  as  much  as  two  under  the  old.  As  a  more  care- 
ful and  constant  cultivation  was  introduced,  a  greater  number 
of  hands  were  required  on  every  farm  ;  and  much  of  the  sur- 
plus labor  which  had  been  flung  off  the  land  in  the  com- 
mencement of  the  new  system  was  thus  recalled  to  it.  But 
a  far  more  efficient  agency  in  absorbing  the  unemployed  was 
found  in  the  development  of  manufactures.  The  linen 
trade  was  as  yet  of  small  value,  and  that  of  silk-weaving  was 
only  just  introduced.  But  the  woolen  manufacture  was  fast 
becoming  an  important  element  in  the  national  wealth. 
England  no  longer  sent  her  fleeces  to  be  woven  in  Flanders 
and  to  be  dyed  at  Florence.  The  spinning  of  yarn,  the 
weaving,  fulling,  and  dyeing  of  cloth,  was  spreading  rapidly 
from  the  towns  over  the  country  side.  The  worsted  trade, 
of  which  Norwich  was  the  center,  extended  over  the  whole 
of  the  Eastern  counties.  Farmers'  wives  began  everywhere 
to  spin  their  wool  from  their  own  sheeps'  backs  into  a  coarse 
"  home-spun/'  The  South  and  the  West,  however,  still  re- 
mained the  great  seats  of  industry  and  of  wealth,  for  they 
were  the  homes  of  mining  and  manufacturing  activity.  The 
iron  manufactures  were  limited  to  Kent  and  Sussex,  though 
their  prosperity  in  this  quarter  was  already  threatened  by 
the  growing  scarcity  of  the  wood  which  fed  their  furnaces, 
and  by  the  exhaustion  of  the  forests  of  the  Weald.  Corn- 
wall was  then,  as  now,  the  sole  exporter  of  tin  ;  and  the  ex- 
portation of  its  copper  was  just  beginning.  The  broadcloths 
of  the  West  claimed  the  palm  among  the  woolen  stuffs  of 
England.  The  Cinque  Ports  held  almost  a  monopoly  of  the 
commerce  of  the  Channel.  Every  little  harbor  from  the  Fore- 
land to  the  Land's  End  sent  out  its  fleet  of  fishing-boats, 
manned  with  ths  bold  seaman  who  were  to  furnish  crews  for 
Drake  and  the  Buccaneers.  But  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth 
the  poverty  and  inaction  to  which  the  North  had  been  doomed 
for  so  many  centuries  began  at  last  to  be  broken.  We  see 
the  first  signs  of  the  revolution  which  has  transferred  English 
manufactures  and  English  wealth  to  the  north  of  the  Mersey 
and  the  Humber  in  the  mention  which  now  meets  us  of  the 
friezes  of  Manchester,  the  coverlets  of  York,  the  cutlery  of 
Sheffield,  and  the  cloth  trade  of  Halifax. 
The  growth  however  of  English  commerce  far  outstripped 


TTIE   ENGLAND   OF   ELIZABETH.  501 

that  of  its  manufactures.     We  must  not  judge  of  it,  indeed, 
by  any  modem  standard  ;   for  the  whole  population  of  the 
country  can  hardly  have  exceeded  five  or  six  mil- 
lions, and  the  burthen  of  all  the  vessels  engaged   _Er?li811 
1  •  .  Commerce 

in  ordinary  commerce  was  estimated  at  little  more 

than  fifty  thousand  tons.  The  size  of  the  vessels  employed 
in  it  would  nowadays  seem  insignificant;  a  modern  collier 
brig  is  probably  as  large  as  the  biggest  merchant  vessel  which 
then  sailed  from  the  port  of  London.  But  it  was  under 
Elizabeth  that  English  commerce  began  the  rapid  career  of 
development  which  has  made  us  the  carriers  of  the  world. 
The  foundation  of  the  Royal  Exchange  by  Sir  Thomas  Gresh- 
am  was  a  mark  of  the  commercial  progress  of  the  time.  By 
far  the  most  important  branch  of  our  trade  was  with  Flan- 
ders ;  Antwerp  and  Bruges  were  in  fact  the  general  marts 
of  the  world  in  the  early  part  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
the  annual  export  of  English  wool  and  drapery  to  their 
markets  was  estimated  at  a  sum  of  more  than  two  millions 
in  value.  It  was  with  the  ruin  of  Antwerp  at  the  time  of 
its  siege  and  capture  by  the  Duke  of  Parma  that  the  com- 
mercial supremacy  of  our  own  capital  was  first  established. 
A  third  of  the  merchants  and  manufacturers  of  the  ruined 
city  are  said  to  have  found  a  refuge  on  the  banks  of  the 
Thames.  The  export  trade  to  Flanders  died  away  as  London 
developed  into  the  general  mart  of  Europe,  where  the  gold 
and  sugar  of  the  New  World  were  found  side  by  side  with 
the  cotton  of  India,  the  silks  of  the  East,  and  the  woolen 
stuffs  of  England  itself.  Not  only  was  much  of  the  old  trade 
of  the  world  transferred  by  this  change  to  English  shores, 
but  the  sudden  burst  of  national  vigor  found  new  outlets 
for  its  activity.  The  Venetian  carrying  fleet  still  touched 
at  Southampton  ;  but  as  far  back  as  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Seventh  a  commercial  treaty  had  been  concluded  with 
Florence,  and  the  trade  with  the  Mediterranean  which  had 
begun  under  Richard  the  Third  constantly  took  a  wider  de- 
velopment. The  trade  between  England  and  the  Baltic 
ports  had  hitherto  been  concluded  by  the  Hanseatic  mer- 
chants ;  but  the  extinction  at  this  time  of  their  London 
depot,  the  Steel  Yard,  was  a  sign  that  this  trade  too  had 
now  passed  into  English  hands.  The  growth  of  Boston  and 
Hull  marked  an  increase  of  commercial  intercourse  with 


502  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Scandinavia.  The  prosperity  of  Bristol,  which  depended  in 
great  measure  on  the  trade  with  Ireland,  was  stimulated  by 
the  conquest  and  colonization  of  that  island  at  the  close  of 
the  queen's  reign  and  the  beginning  of  her  successor's. 
The  dream  of  a  northern  passage  to  India  opened  up  a  trade 
with  a  land  as  yet  unknown.  Of  three  ships  which  sailed 
under  Hugh  Willoughby  to  realize  this  dream,  two  were 
found  afterwards  frozen  with  their  crews  and  their  hapless 
commander  on  the  coast  of  Lapland  ;  but  the  third,  under 
Richard  Chancellor,  made  its  way  safely  to  the  White  Sea 
and  by  its  discovery  of  Archangel  created  the  trade  with 
Russia.  A  more  lucrative  traffic  had  already  begun  with  the 
coast  of  Guinea,  to  whose  gold-dust  and  ivory  the  merchants 
of  Southampton  owed  their  wealth.  The  guilt  of  the  Slave 
Trade  which  sprang  out  of  it  rests  with  John  Hawkins, 
whose  arms  (a  demi-moor,  proper,  bound  with  a  cord)  com- 
memorated his  priority  in  the  transport  of  negroes  from 
Africa  to  the  labor-fields  of  the  New  World.  The  fisheries 
of  the  Channel  and  the  German  Ocean  gave  occupation  to 
the  numerous  ports  which  lined  the  coast  from  Yarmouth 
to  Plymouth  Haven  ;  Bristol  and  Chester  were  rivals  in  the 
fisheries  of  Ulster  ;  and  the  voyage  of  Sebastian  Cabot  from 
the  former  port  to  the  mainland  of  North  America  had 
called  English  vessels  to  the  stormy  ocean  of  the  North. 
From  the  time  of  Henry  the  Eighth  the  number  of  English 
boats  engaged  on  the  cod-banks  of  Newfoundland  steadily 
increased,  and  at  the  close  of  Elizabeth's  reign  the  seamen 
of  Biscay  found  English  rivals  in  the  whale-fishery  of  the 
Polar  seas. 

What  Elizabeth  contributed  to  this  upgrowth  of  national 

prosperity  was  the  peace  and  social   order  from   which   it 

Wealth  and  sprang,  and  the  thrift  which  spared  the  purses  of 

Social       her  subjects  by  enabling  her  in  ordinary  times  to 

Progress,  content  herself  with  the  ordinary  resources  of  the 
Crown.  She  lent,  too,  a  ready  patronage  to  the  new  com- 
merce, she  shared  in  its  speculations,  she  considered  its  ex- 
tension and  protection  as  a  part  of  public  policy,  and  she 
sanctioned  the  formation  of  the  great  Merchant  Companies 
which  could  then  alone  secure  the  trader  against  wrong  or 
injustice  in  distant  countries.  The  Merchant-Adventurers 
of  London,  a  body  which  Lad  existed  long  before,  and  had 


THE   ENGLAND  OP   ELIZABETH.  503 

received  a  charter  of  incorporation  under  Henry  the  Seventh, 
furnished  a  model  for  the  Russian  Company  and  the  Company 
which  absorbed  the  new  commerce  to  the  Indies.  But  it  \vaa 
not  wholly  with  satisfaction  that  either  Elizabeth  or  her 
ministers  watched  the  social  change  which  wealth  was  pro- 
ducing around  them.  They  feared  the  increased  expenditure 
and  comfort  which  necessarily  followed  it,  as  likely  to  im- 
poverish the  land  and  to  eat  out  the  hardihood  of  the  people. 
"  England  spendeth  more  on  wines  in  one  year,"  complained 
Cecil,  "than  it  did  in  ancient  times  in  four  years."  The 
disuse  of  salt-fish  and  the  greater  consumption  of  meat 
marked  the  improvement  which  was  taking  place  among  the 
country  folk.  Their  rough  and  wattled  farmhouses  were 
being  superseded  by  dwellings  of  brick  and  stone.  Pewter 
was  replacing  the  wooden  trenchers  of  the  earlier  yeomanry  ; 
there  were  yeomen  who  could  boast  of  a  fair  show  of  silver 
plate.  It  is  from  this  period  indeed  that  we  can  first  date 
the  rise  of  a  conception  which  seems  to  us  now  a  peculiarly 
English  one,  the  conception  of  domestic  comfort.  The 
chimney-corner,  so  closely  associated  with  family  life,  camo 
into  existence  with  the  general  introduction  of  chimneys,  a 
feature  rare  in  ordinary  houses  at  the  beginning  of  this  reign. 
Pillows,  winch  had  before  been  despised  by  the  farmer  ::nd 
the  trader  as  fit  only  "  for  women  in  child-bed/'  were  now  in 
general  use.  Carpets  superseded  the  filthy  flooring  of  rushes. 
The  lofty  houses  of  the  wealthier  merchants,  their  parapeted 
fronts  and  costly  wainscoting,  their  cumbrous  but  elaborate 
beds,  their  carved  staircases,  their  quaintly  figured  gables, 
not  only  contrasted  with  the  squalor  which  had  till  then 
characterized  English  towns,  but  marked  the  rise  of  a  new 
middle  class  which  was  to  play  its  part  in  later  history.  A 
transformation  of  an  even  more  striking  kind  proclaimed  the 
extinction  of  the  feudal  character  of  the  noblesse.  Gloomy 
walls  and  serried  battlements  disappeared  from  the  dwellings 
of  the  gentry.  The  strength  of  the  medieval  fortress  gave 
way  to  the  pomp  and  grace  of  the  Elizabethan  Hall.  Knole, 
Longleat,  Burluigh  and  Hatfield.  Ilardwick  and  Audley  End, 
are  familiar  instances  of  the  social  r.s  well  as  architectural 
change  which  covered  England  with  buildings  where  the 
thought  of  defense  was  abandoned  for  tnat  of  domestic  com- 
fort and  refinement.  We  still  gaze  with  pleasure  oil  their 


504  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

picturesque  line  of  gables,  their  fretted  fronts,  their  gilded 
turrets  and  fanciful  vanes,  their  castellated  gateways,  the 
jutting  oriels  from  which  the  great  noble  looked  down  on  his 
new  Italian  garden,  on  ics  stately  terraces  and  broad  flights 
of  steps,  its  vuses  and  fountains,  its  quaint  mazes,  its  formal 
walks,  its  lines  of  yews  cut  into  grotesque  shapes  in  hopeless 
rivalry  of  the  cypress  avenues  of  the  South.  The  Italian  re- 
finement of  life  which  told  on  pleasaunce  and  garden  told  on 
the  remodeling  of  the  house  within,  raised  the  principal 
apartments  to  an  upper  floor — a  change  to  which  we  owe  the 
grand  staircases  of  the  time — surrounded  the  quiet  courts  by 
long  "  galleries  of  the  presence,"  crowned  the  rude  hearth 
with  huge  chimney-pieces  adorned  with  fauns  and  cupids, 
with  quaintly  interlaced  monograms  and  fantastic  ara- 
besques, hung  tapestries  on  the  walls,  and  crowded  each 
chamber  with  quaintly-carved  chairs  and  costly  cabinets. 
The  life  of  the  Middle  Ages  concentrated  itself  in  the  vast 
castle  hall,  where  the  baron  looked  from  his  upper  dais  on 
the  retainers  who  gathered  at  his  board.  But  the  great 
households  were  fast  breaking  up  ;  and  the  whole  feudal 
economy  disappeared  when  the  lord  of  the  household  with- 
drew with  his  family  into  his  "parlor"  or  "  withdrawing- 
room/'and  left  the  hall  to  his  dependents.  The  prodigal  use 
of  glass  became  a  marked  feature  in  the  domestic  architecture 
of  the  time,  and  one  whose  influence  on  the  general  health 
of  the  people  can  hardly  be  overrated.  Long  lines  of  win- 
dows stretched  over  the  fronts  of  the  new  manor  halls.  Every 
merchant's  house  had  its  oriel.  "  You  shall  have  sometimes," 
Lord  Bacon  grumbled,  "your  houses  so  full  of  glass,  that  we 
cannot  tell  where  to  come  to  be  out  of  the  sun  or  the  cold.'' 
But  the  prodigal  en joyment  of  light  and  sunshine  was  a  mark 
of  the  temper  of  the  age.  The  lavishness  of  a  new  wealth 
united  with  a  lavishness  of  life,  a  love  of  beauty,  of  color,  of 
display,  to  revolutionize  English  dress.  The  queen's  three 
thousand  robes  were  rivaled  in  their  bravery  by  the  slashed 
velvets,  the  ruffs,  the  jeweled  purpoints  of  the  courtiers 
around  her.  Men  "wore  a  manor  on  their  backs."  The  old 
sober  notions  of  thrift  melted  before  the  strange  revolutions 
of  fortune  wrought  by  the  New  "World.  Gallants  gambled 
away  a  fortune  at  a  sitting,  and  sailed  off  to  make  afresh  one 
in  the  Indies.  Visions  of  galleons  loaded  to  the  brim  with 


THE  ENGLATO  OP  ELIZABETH.  505 

pearls  and  diamonds  and  ingots  of  silver,  dreams  of  El  Dora- 
dos where  all  was  of  gold,  threw  a  haze  of  prodigality  and 
profusion  over  the  imagination  of  the  meanest  seaman.  The 
wonders,  too,  of  the  New  World  kindled  a  burst  of  extrav- 
agant fancy  in  the  Old.  The  strange  medley  of  past  and 
present  which  distinguishes  its  marks  and  feastings  only 
reflected  the  medley  of  men's  thonghts.  Pedantry,  novelty, 
the  allegory  of  Italy,  the  chivalry  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
mythology  of  Rome,  the  English  bear-fight,  pastorals,  super- 
stition, farce,  all  took  their  turn  in  the  entertainment  which 
Lord  Leicester  provided  for  the  queen  at  Kenilworth.  A 
"  wild  man  "  from  the  Indies  chanted  her  praises,  and  Echo 
answered  him.  Elizabeth  turned  from  the  greetings  of  sibyls 
and  giants  to  deliver  the  enchanted  lady  from  her  tyrant 
"  S.ins  Pitie."  Shepherdesses  welcomed  her  with  carols  of 
the  spring,  while  Ceres  and  Bacchus  poured  their  corn  and 
grapes  at  her  feet. 

It  was  to  this  turmoil  of  men's  minds,  this  wayward  luxu- 
rian^e  and  prodigality  of  fancy,  that  we  owe  the  revival  of 
English  letters  under  Elizabeth.  Here,  as  else-  ^  Revival 
where,  the  Renascence  found  vernacular  literature  of  Enjiish 
all  but  dead,  poetry  reduced  to  the  doggrel  of  ^teratu.-e. 
Skelton,  history  to  the  annals  of  Fabyan  or  Halle.  It  had 
however  done  little* for  English  letters.  The  overpowering 
influence  of  the  new  models  both  of  thought  and  style  which 
it  gave  to  the  world  in  the  writers  of  Greece  and  Rome  was 
at  first  felt  only  as  a  fresh  check  to  the  dreams  of  any  revival 
of  English  poetry  or  prose.  Though  England  shared  more 
than  any  European  country  in  the  political  and  ecclesiastical 
results  of  the  New  Learning,  its  literary  results  were  far  less 
than  in  the  rest  of  Europe,  in  Italy,  or  Germany,  or  France. 
More  alone  ranks  among  the  great  classical  scholars  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  Classical  learning  indeed  all  but  perished 
at  the  Universities  in  the  storm  of  the  Reformation,  nor  did 
it  revive  there  till  the  close  of  Elizabeth's  rsign.  Insensibly 
however  the  influences  of  the  Renascence  fertilized  the  intel- 
lectual soil  of  England  for  the  rich  harvest  that  was  to  come. 
The  court  poetry  which  clustered  round  Wyatt  and  Surrey, 
exotic  and  imitative  as  it  was,  promised  a  new  life  for  English 
verse.  The  growth  of  grammar  schools  realized  the  dn-uru 
of  Sir  Thomas  More,  and  brought  the  middle-classes,  from 


506  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  squire  to  the  petty  tradesman,  into  contact  with  the 
masters  of  Greece  and  Home.  The  love  of  travel,  which  be- 
came so  remarkable  a  characteristic  of  Elizabeth's  day, 
quickened  the  intelligence  of  the  wealthier  noble.  "  Home- 
keeping  youths/'  says  Shakespere  in  words  that  mark  the 
time,  "have  ever  homely  wits  ;"  and  a  tour  over  the  Con- 
tinent was  just  becoming  part  of  the  education  of  a  gentle- 
man. Fairfax's  version  of  Tasso,  Harrington's  version  of 
Ariosto,  were  signs  of  the  influence  which  the  literature  of 
Italy,  the  land  to  which  travel  led  most  frequently,  exerted  on 
English  minds.  The  writers  of  Greece  and  Rome  began  at  last 
to  tell  upon  England  when  they  were  popularized  by  a  crowd  of 
translations.  Chapman's  noble  version  of  Homer  stands  high 
above  its  fellows,  but  all  the  greater  poets  and  historians  of 
the  classical  world  were  turned  into  English  before  the  close 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  It  is  characteristic  of  England 
that  historical  literature  was  the  first  to  rise  from  its  long 
death,  though  the  form  in  which  it  rose  marked  the  differ- 
ence between  the  world  in  which  it  had  perished  and  that  in 
which  it  reappeared.  During  the  Middle  Ages  the  worl.d  had 
been  without  a  pa^t,  save  the  shadowy  and  unknown  past  of 
early  Rome  ;  and  annalist  and  chronicler  told  the  story  of  the 
years  which  went  before  as  a  preface  to  his  tale  of  the  present 
without  a  sense  of  any  difference  between  them.  But  the 
religions,  social,  and  political  change  which  had  passed  over 
England  under  the  New  Monarchy  broke  the  continuity  of 
its  life  ;  and  the  depth  of  the  rift  between  the  two  ages  is 
seen  by  the  way  in  which  History  passes,  on  its  revival  under 
Elizabeth,  from  the  medieval  form  of  pure  narrative  to  its 
modern  form  of  an  investigation  and  reconstruction  of  the 
past.  The  new  interest  which  attached  to  the  bygone  world 
led  to  the  collection  of  its  annals,  their  reprinting  and  em- 
bodiment in  an  English  shape.  It  was  his  desire  to  give  the 
Elizabethan  Church  a  basis  in  the  past,  as  much  as  any  pure 
zeal  for  letters,  which  induced  Archbishop  Parker  to  lead  the 
way  in  the  first  of  these  labors.  The  collection  of  historical 
manuscripts  which,  following  in  the  track  of  Leland,  he  res- 
cued from  the  wreck  of  the  monastic  libraries  created  a  school 
of  antiquarian  imitators,  whose  research  and  industry  have 
preserved  for  us  almost  every  work  of  permanent  historical 
value  which  existed  before  the  Dissolution  of  the  Monasteries. 


THE   ENGLAND  OF   ELIZABETH.  507 

To  his  publication  of  some  of  our  earlier  chronicles  we  owe 
the  series  of  similar  publications  which  bear  the  names  of 
Oamden,  Twysden,  and  Gale.  But  as  a  brunch  of  literature 
English  History  in  the  new  shape  which  we  have  noted  began 
in  the  work  of  the  poet  Daniel.  The  chronicles  of  Stowe  and 
Speed,  who  preceded  him,  are  simple  records  of  the  past, 
often  copied  almost  literally  from  the  annals  they  used,  and 
utterly  without  style  or  arrangement  ;  while  Daniel,  inaccu- 
rate and  superficial  as  he  is,  gave  his  story  a  literary  form  and 
embodied  it  in  a  pure  and  graceful  prose.  Two  larger  works 
at  the  close  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  the  "  History  of  the  Turks" 
by  Knolles,  and  Ralegh's  vast  but  unfinished  plan  of  the 
"  History  of  the  World,"  showed  the  widening  of  historic 
interest  beyond  the  merely  national  bounds  to  which  it  had 
hitherto  been  confined. 

A  far  higher  development  of.  our  literature  sprang  from 
the  growing  influence  which  Italy,  as  we  have  seen,  was  ex- 
erting, partly  through  travel  and  partly  through  Italy  and 
its  poetry  and  romances,  on  the  manners  and  taste  English 
of  the  time.  Men  made  more  account  of  a  story  Hte.-j.ture. 
of  Boccaccio's,  it  was  said,  than  of  a  story  from  the  Bible. 
The  dress,  the  speech,  the  manners  of  Italy  became  objects 
of  almost  passionate  imitation,  and  of  an  imitation  not  always 
of  the  wisest  or  noblest  kind.  To  Ascham  it  seemed  like 
"  the  enchantment  of  Circe  brought  out  of  Italy  to  mar  men's 
manners  in  England."  "An  Italianate  Englishman,"  ran 
the  harder  proverb  of  Italy  itself,  "  is  an  incarnate  devil." 
The  literary  form  which  this  imitation  took  seemed  at  any 
rate  absurd.  John  Lvly,  distinguished  both  as  a  dramatist 
and  a  poet,  laid  aside  the  tradition  of  English  style  for  a 
style  modeled  on  the  decadence  of  Italian  prose.  Euphuism, 
as  the  new  fashion  has  been  styled  from  the  prose  romance  of 
Euphnes  in  which  Lyly  originated  it,  is  best  known  to 
modern  readers  by  the  pitiless  caricature  in  which  Shakspere 
quizzed  its  pedantry,  its  affectation,  the  meaningless  monot- 
ony of  its  far-fetched  phrases,  the  absurdity  of  its  extrava- 
gant conceits.  Its  representative,  Armado  in  "  Love's 
Labor's  Lost,"  is  "  a  man  of  fire-new  words,  fashion's  own 
knight,"  "  that  hath  a  mint  of  phrases  in  his  brain  ;  one 
whom  the  music  of  his  own  vain  tongue  doth  ravish  like  en- 
chanting harmony."  But  its  very  extravagance  sprang  from 


508  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE, 

the  general  burst  of  delight  in  the  new  resources  of  thought 
and  language  which  literature  felt  to  be  at  its  disposal  ;  and 
the  new  sense  of  literary  beauty  which  is  disclosed  in  its  af- 
fectation, in  its  love  of  a  "  mint  of  phrases"  and  the  "  music 
of  its  own  vain  tongue,"  the  new  sense  of  pleasure  in  delicacy 
or  grandeur  of  phrase,  in  the  structure  and  arrangement  of 
sentences,  in  what  has  been  termed  the  atmosphere  of  words, 
was  a  sense  out  of  which  style  was  itself  to  spring.  For  a 
time  Euphuism  had  it  all  its  own  way.  Elizabeth  was  the 
most  affected  and  detestable  of  Euphuists  ;  and  "  that  beauty 
in  Court  which  could  not  parley  Euphuism,"  a  courtier  of 
Charles  the  First's  time  tells  us,  "  was  as  little  regarded  as 
she  that  now  there  speaks  not  French."  The  fashion  however 
passed  away,  but  the  "  Arcadia"  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney  shows 
the  wonderful  advance  which  prose  had  made  under  its  in- 
fluence. Sidney,  the  nephew  of  Lord  Leicester,  was  the  idol 
of  his  time,  and  perhaps  no  figure  reflects  the  age  more  fully 
and  more  beautifully.  Fair  as  he  was  brave,  quick  of  wit  as 
of  affection,  noble  and  generous  in  temper,  dear  to  Elizabeth 
as  to  Spenser,  the  darling  of  the  court  and  of  the  carnp,  his 
learning  and  his  genius  made  him  the  center  of  the  literary 
world  which  was  springing  into  birth  on  English  soil.  He 
had  traveled  in  France  and  Italy,  he  was  master  alike  of  the 
older  learning  and  of  the  new  discoveries  of  astronomy. 
Bruno  dedicated  to  him  as  to  a  friend  his  metaphysical  specu- 
lations ;  he  was  familiar  with  the  drama  of  Spain,  the  poems 
of  Ronsard,  the  sonnets  of  Italy.  He  combined  the  wisdom 
of  a  grave  councilor  with  the  romantic  chivalry  of  a  knight- 
errant.  "I  never  heard  the  old  story  of  Percy  and  Douglas," 
he  says,  "  that  I  found  not  my  heart  moved  more  than  with 
a  trumpet."  He  flung  away  his  life  to  save  the  English  army 
in  Flanders,  and  as  he  lay  dying  they  brought  a  cup  of  water 
to  his  fevered  lips.  He  bade  them  give  it  to  a  soldier  who 
was  stretched  on  the  ground  beside  him.  "  Thy  necessity," 
he  said,  "is  greater  than  mine."  The  whole  of  Sidney's 
nature,  his  chivalry  and  his  learning,  his  thirst  for  adventures, 
his  tendency  to  extravagance,  his  freshness  of  tone,  his  tender- 
ness and  childlike  simplicity  of  heart,  his  affectation  and  false 
sentiment,  his  keen  sense  of  pleasure  and  delight,  pours  itself 
out  in  the  pastoral  medley,  forced,  tedious,  and  yet  strangely 
beautiful,  of  his  "Arcadia."  In  his  "  Defense  of  Poetry" 


THE   ENGLAND   OF   ELIZABETH.  509 

the  youthful  exuberance  of  the  romancer  has  passed  into  the 
earnest  vigor  and  grandiose  stateliness  of  the  rhetorician. 
But  whether  in  the  one  work  or  the  other,  the  flexibility,  the 
rnusic,  the  luminous  clearness  of  Sidney's  style  remains  the 
same.  The  quickness  and  vivacity  of  English  prose,  how- 
ever, was  first  developed  in  the  school  of  Italian  imitators  who 
appeared  in  Elizabeth's  later  years.  The  origin  of  English 
fiction  is  to  be  found  in  the  tales  and  romances  with  which 
Greene  and  Nash  crowded  the  market,  models  for  which 
they  found  in  the  Italian  novels.  The  brief  form  of  these 
novelettes  soon  led  to  the  appearance  of  the  "  pamphlet ; " 
and  a  new  world  of  readers  was  seen  in  the  rapidity  with 
which  the  stories  of  scurrilous  libels  which  passed  under  this 
name  were  issued,  and  the  greediness  with  which  they  were 
devoured.  It  was  the  boast  of  Greene  that  in  the  eight  years 
before  his  death  he  had  produced  forty  pamphlets.  "In  a 
night  or  a  day  would  he  have  yarked  up  a  pamphlet,  as  well 
as  in  seven  years,  and  glad  was  that  printer  that  might  be 
blest  to  pay  him  dear  for  the  very  dregs  of  his  wit."  Modern 
eyes  see  less  of  the  wit  than  of  the  dregs  in  the  works  of 
Greene  and  his  compeers  ;  but  the  attacks  which  Nash 
directed  against  the  Puritans  and  his  rivals  were  the  first 
English  works  which  shook  utterly  off  the  pedantry  and  ex- 
travagance of  Euphuism.  In  his  lightness,  his  facility,  his 
vivacity,  his  directness  of  speech,  we  have  the  beginning  of 
popular  literature.  It  had  descended  from  the  closet  to  the 
street,  and  the  very  change  implied  that  the  street  was  ready 
to  receive  it.  The  abundance  indeed  of  printers  and  of 
printed  books  at  the  close  of  the  queen's  reign  shows  that 
the  world  of  readers  and  writers  had  widened  far  beyond  the 
small  circle  of  scholars  and  courtiers  with  which  it  begun. 

We  shall  have  to  review  at  a  later  time  the  groat  poetic 
burst  for  which  this  intellectual  advance  was  paving  the  way, 
and  the  moral  and  religious  change  which  was  EUZ  betVn 
passing  over  the  country  through  the  progress  of  Enghnl  and 
Puritanism.  But  both*  the  intellectual  and  the  &*  Crown- 
religious  impulses  of  the  age  united  with  the  influence  of 
its  growing  wealth  to  revive  a  spirit  of  independence 
in  the  nation  at  large,  a  spirit  which  it  was  impossible  for 
Elizabeth  to  understand,  but  the  strength  of  which  her  won- 
derful tact  enabled  her  to  feel.  Long  before  auy  opeu  con- 


610  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

flict  arose  between  the  people  and  the  Crown,  we  see  her 
instinctive  perception  of  the  changes  which  were  going  on 
round  her  in  the  modifications,  conscious  or  unconscious, 
which  she  introd  need  into  the  system  of  the  monarchy.  Of  its 
usurpations  on  English  liberty  she  abandoned  none.  But  she 
curtailed  and  softened  down  almost  all.  She  tampered,  as 
her  predecessors  had  tampered,  with  personal!' reedom  ;  there 
was  the  same  straining  of  statutes  and  coercion  of  juries  in 
political  trials  as  before,  and  an  arbitrary  power  of  imprison- 
ment was  still  exercised  by  the  Council.  The  duties  she  im- 
posed on  cloth  and  sweet  wines  were  an  assertion  of  her  right 
of  arbitrary  taxation.  Proclamations  in  Council  constantly 
assumed  the  force  of  law.  In  one  part  of  her  policy  indeed 
Elizabeth  seemed  to  fall  back  from  the  constitutional  atti- 
tude assumed  by  the  Tudor  sovereigns.  Ever  since  Cromwell's 
time  the  Parliament  had  been  convened  almost  year  by  year 
as  a  great  engine  of  justice  and  legislation,  but  Elizabeth  re- 
curred to  the  older  jealousy  of  the  two  Houses  which  had 
been  entertained  by  Edward  the  Fourth,  Henry  the  Seventh, 
and  Wolsey.  Her  Parliaments  were  summoned  at  intervals 
of  never  less  than  three,  and  sometimes  of  five  years,  and 
never  save  on  urgent  necessity.  Practically,  however,  the 
royal  power  was  wielded  with  a  caution  and  moderation  that 
showed  the  sense  of  a  gathering  difficulty  in  the  full  exercise 
of  it.  The  ordinary  course  of  justice  was  left  undisturbed. 
The  jurisdiction  of  the  Council  was  asserted  almost  exclu- 
sively over  the  Catholics  ;  and  defended  in  their  case  as  a  pre- 
caution against  pressing  dangers.  The  proclamations  issued 
were  temporary  in  character  and  of  small  importance. 
The  two  duties  imposed  were  so  slight  as  to  pass  almost  unno- 
ticed in  the  general  satisfaction  at  Elizabeth's  abstinence  from 
internal  taxation.  She  abandoned  the  benevolences  and 
forced  loans  which  had  brought  home  the  s?nse  of  tyrannyto 
the  subjects  of  her  predecessors.  She  treated  'the  Privy 
Seals,  which  on  emergencies  she  issued  for  advances  to  her 
Exchequer,  simply  as  anticipations  of  her  revenue  (like  our 
own  Exchequer  Bills),  and  punctually  repaid  them.  The 
monopolies  with  which  she  fettered  trade  proved  a  m.ore 
serious  grievance  ;  but  during  her  earlier  reign  they  were 
looked  on  as  a  part  of  the  system  of  Merchant  Associations, 
which  were  at  that  time  regarded  as  necessary  for  the  regula- 


THE   ENGLAND   OF   ELIZABETH.  £11 

tion  and  protection  of  the  growing  commerce.  Her  thrift 
enabled  her  in  ordinary  times  of  peace  to  defray  the  current 
expenses  of  the  Crown  from  its  ordinary  revenues.  But  the 
thrift  was  dictated  not  so  much  by  economy  as  by  the  desire 
to  avoid  summoning  fresh  Parliaments.  The  queen  saw  that 
the  "  management"  of  the  two  Houses,  so  easy  to  Cromwell, 
was  becoming  harder  every  day.  The  rise  of  a  new  nobility, 
enriched  by  the  spoils  of  the  Church  and  trained  to  political 
life  by  the  stress  of  events  around  them,  was  giving  fresh 
vigor  to  the  Lords.  The  increased  wealth  of  the  country 
gentry,  as  well  as  their  growing  desire  to  obtain  a  seat  in  the 
Commons,  brought  about  the  cessation  at  this  time  of  the 
old  practise  of  payment  of  members  by  their  constituencies.  A 
change, too,  in  the  borough  representation, which  hadlongbeen 
in  progress,  but  was  now  for  the  first  time.egally  recognized, 
tended  greatly  to  increase  the  vigor  and  .ndependence  of  the 
Lower  House.  The  members  for  boroughs  had  been  required 
by  the  terms  of  the  older  writs  to  be  chosen  from  the  body  of 
the  burgesses  ;  and  an  Act  of  Henry  the  Fifth  gave  this  cus- 
tom the  force  of  law.  But  the  passing  of  the  Act  shows  that 
the  custom  was  already  widely  infringed  ;  and  by  *he  ime  of 
Elizabeth  most  borough  seats  were  filled  by  strangers,  often 
nominees  of  the  great  landowners  round,  but  for  the  most 
part  men  of  wealth  and  blood,  whose  aim  in  entering  Parlia- 
ment was  a  purely  political  one,  and  whose  attitude  towards 
the  Crown  was  far  bolder  and  more  independent  than  that  of 
the  quiet  tradesmen  who  preceded  them.  So  changed,  indeed, 
was  the  tone  of  the  Commons,  even  as  early  as  the  close  of 
Henry's  reign,  that  Edward  and  Mary  both  fell  back  on  the 
prerogative  of  the  Crown  to  create  boroughs,  and  summoned 
members  from  fresh  constituencies,  which  were  often  mere 
villages,  and  wholly  in  the  hands  of  the  Crown.  But  this 
"packing  of  the  House"  had  still  to  be  continued  by  their 
successor.  The  larjo  number  of  such  members  whom  Eliza- 
beth called  into  the  Commons,  sixty-two  in  all,  was  a  proof 
of  the  increasing  difficulty  which  the  Government  found  in 
securing  a  working  majority. 

Had  Elizabeth  lived  in  quiet  times  her  thrift  would  have 
saved  her  from  the  need  of  summoning  Parliament  at  all. 
But  the  perils  of  her  reign  drove  her  to  renewed  demands  of 
subsidies,  and  at  each  demand  the  tone  of  the  Houses  rose 


512  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

higher  antf  higher.  Constitutionally  the  policy  of  Cromwell 
had  held  this  special  advantage,  that  at  the  very  crisis  of 
Elizabeth  our  liberties  it  had  acknowledged  and  confirmed 
and  ft3  by  repeated  instances,  for  its  own  purposes  of 
Parliam.nt.  arbitrary  rule,  the  traditional  right  of  Parlia- 
ment to  grant  subsidies,  to  enact  laws,  and  to  consider  and 
petition  for  the  redress. of  grievances.  These  rights  re- 
mained, while  the  power  which  had  turned  them  into  a  mere 
engine  of  despotism  was  growing  weaker  year  by  year.  Not 
only  did  the  Parliament  of  Elizabeth  exercise  its  powers  as 
fully  as  the  Parliament  of  Cromwell,  but  the  forces,  political 
and  religious,  which  she  sought  stubbornly  to  hold  in  check 
pressed  on  irresistibly,  and  soon  led  to  the  claiming  of  new 
privileges.  In  spite  of  the  rarity  of  its  assembling,  in  spite 
of  high  words  and  imprisonment  and  dexterous  management, 
the  Parliament  quietly  gained  a  power  which,  at  her  acces- 
sion, the  queen  could  never  have  dreamed  of  its  possessing. 
Step  by  step  the  Lower  House  won  the  freedom  of  its  mem- 
bers from  arrest  save  by  its  own  permission,  the  right  of 
punishing  and  expelling  members  for  crimes  committed 
within  the  House,  and  of  determining  all  matters  relating 
to  elections.  The  more  important  claim  of  freedom  of 
speech  brought  on  a  series  of  petty  conflicts  which  showed 
Elizabeth's  instincts  of  despotism,  as  well  as  her  sense  of  the 
new  power  which  despotism  had  to  face.  In  the  great  crisis 
of  the  Darnley  marriage  Mr.  Dal  ton  defied  a  royal  prohibi- 
tion to  mention  the  subject  of  the  succession  by  denouncing 
the  claim  of  the  Scottish  queen.  Elizabeth  at  once  ordered 
him  into  arrest,  but  the  Commons  prayed  for  leave  "  to  confer 
upon  their  liberties,"  and  the  quean  ordered  his  release.  In 
the  same  spirit  she  commanded  Mr.  Strickland,  the  mover  of 
a  bill  for  the  reform  of  the  Common  Prayer,  to  appear  no  more 
in  Parliament  ;  b:it  as  soon  as  she  perceived  the  House  was 
bent  upon  his  restoration  the  command  was  withdrawn.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  Commons  still  shrank  from  any  consis- 
tent repudiation  of  Elizabeth's  assumption  of  control  over 
freedom  of  speech.  The  bold  protest  of  Peter  Wentworth 
against  it  was  met  by  the  House  itself  with  his  committal  to 
the  Tower  :  and  the  yet  bolder  question  which  he  addressed 
to  a  later  Parliament,  "  Whether  this  Council  is  not  a  place 
for  every  member  of  the  same  freely  aud  without  control,  by 


THE   ENGLAND  OF   ELIZABETH.  618 

bill  or  speech,  to  utter  any  of  the  griefs  of  the  Common, 
wealth,''  brought  on  him  a  fresh  imprisonment  at  the  humlg 
of  the  Council,  which  lasted  till  the  dissolution  of  the  Parlia- 
ment and  with  which  the  Commons  declined  to  interfere. 
But  while  vacillating  in  its  assertion  of  the  rights  of  indivi- 
dual speakers,  the  House  steadily  asserted  its  claim  to  the 
wider  powers  which  Cromwell's  policy  had  given  to  Pm-lia- 
mentary  action.  In  theory  the  Tudor  statesmen  regarded 
three  cardinal  subjects,  matters  of  trade,  matters  of  religion, 
and  matters  of  State  as  lying  exclusively  within  the  compe- 
tence of  the. Crown.  But  in  actual  fact  each  subjects  hud 
been  treated  by  Parliament  after  Parliament.  The  whole 
religious  fabric  of  the  realm,  the  very  title  of  Elizabeth, 
rested  on  Parliamentary  statutes.  When  the  Houses  petitioned 
at  the  outset  of  her  reign  for  the  declaration  of  a  successor 
and  for  the  queen's  marriage,  it  was  impossible  to  deny  their 
right  to  intermeddle  with  these  "  matters  of  State,"  though 
she  rebuked  the  demand  and  evaded  an  answer.  But  the 
question  of  the  succession  became  too  vital  to  English  freedom 
and  English  religion  to 'remain  confined  within  Elizabeth's 
council  chambsr.  The  Parliament  which  met  in  1566  re- 
peated the  demand  in  a  more  imperative  way.  Her  con- 
sciousness of  the  real  dangers  of  such  a  request  united  with 
her  arbitrary  temper  to  move  Elizabeth  to  a  burst  of  pas- 
sionate anger.  The  marriage  indeed  she  promised,  but  she 
peremptorily  forbade  the  subject  of  the  succession  to  be  ap- 
proached. Wentworth  at  once  rose  in  the  Commons  to  know 
whether  such  a  prohibition  was  not  "  against  the  liberties  ,of 
Parliament  ?  "  and  the  question  was  followed  by  a  hot  debate. 
A  fresh  message  from  the  queen  commanded  "  that  there 
should  be  no  further  argument,"  but  the  message  was  met 
by  a  request  for  freedem  of  deliberation.  Elizabeth's  pru- 
dence ta:ight  hor  that  retreat  was  necessary;  she  protested 
that  "  she  dii  not  mean  to  prejudice  any  part  of  the  liberties 
heretofore  granted  them  ;"  she  softenod  the  order  of  silence 
into  a  request  ;  and  ths  Commons,  won  by  the  graceful  con- 
cession to  a  loyai  assent,  received  her  message  '•  most  joy- 
fally  and  with  most  hearty  prayers  and  thanks  for  the  same." 
Bit  the  victory  was  none  the  less  a  real  one.  No  such 
struggle  had  taken  place  between  the  Commons  and  the 
Crown  since  the  beginning  of  the  New  Monarchy ;  and  the 
33 


514  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

struggle  had  ended  in  the  virtual  defeat  of  the  Crown.  It  was 
the  prelude  to  another  claim  equally  galling  to  the  queen. 
Though  the  constitution  of  the  Church  rested  in  actual  fact 
on  Parliamentary  enactments,  Elizabeth,  like  the  rest  of  the 
Tudor  sovereigns,  theoretically  held  her  ecclesiastical  suprem- 
acy to  be  a  purely  personal  power,  with  her  administration 
of  which  neither  Parliament  nor  even  her  Council  had  any 
right  to  interfere.  But  the  exclusion  of  the  Catholic  gentry 
through  the  Test  Acts,  and  the  growth  of  Puritanism  among 
the  landowners  as  a  class,  gave  more  and  more  a  Protestant  tone 
to  the  Commons  and  to  the  Council  ;  and  it  was  easy  to  re- 
member that  the  supremacy  which  was  thus  jealously 
guarded  from  Parliamentary  interference  had  been  conferred 
on  the  Crown  by  a  Parliamentary  statute.  Here,  however, 
the  queen,  as  the  religious  representative  of  the  two  parties 
who  made  up  her  subjects,  stood  -on  firmer  ground  than  the 
Commons,  who  represented  but  one  of  them.  And  she  used 
her  advantage  boldly.  The  bills  proposed  by  the  more  ad- 
vanced Protestants  for  the  reform  of  the  Common  Prayer 
were  at  her  command  delivered  up  into  her  hands  and  sup- 
pressed. Went  worth,  the  most  outspoken  of  his  party,  was, 
as  we  have  seen,  imprisoned  in  the  Tower  :  and  in  a  later 
Parliament  the  Speaker  was  expressly  forbidden  to  receive 
bills  "for  reforming  the  Church,  and  transforming  the  Com- 
monwealth. "  In  spite  of  these  obstacles,  however,  the  effort 
for  reform  continued,  and  though  crushed  by  the  Crown  or 
set  aside  by  the  Lords,  ecclesiastical  bills  were  presented  in 
evjery  Parliament.  A  better  fortune  awaited  the  Commons 
in  their  attack  on  the  royal  prerogative  in  matters  of  trade. 
Complaints  made  of  the  licenses  and  monopolies  by  which 
internal  and  external  commerce  were  fettered  were  at  first 
repressed  by  a  royal  reprimand  as  matters  neither  pertaining 
to  the  Commons  nor  within  the  compass  of  their  understand- 
ing. When  the  subject  was  again  stirred  nearly  twenty 
years  afterwards,  Sir  Edward  Hoby  was  sharply  rebuked  by 
"  a  great  personage  "  for  his  complaint  of  the  illegal  exactions 
made  by  the  Exchequer.  But  the  hill  which  he  promoted 
was  sent  up  to  the  Lords  in  spite  of  this,  and  at  the  close  of 
Elizabeth's  reign  the  storm  of  popular  indignation  which 
had  been  roused  by  the  growing  grievance  nerved  the  Com- 
mons to  a  decisive  struggle.  It  was  hi  vain  that  the  minis- 


THE  ARMADA.      1572  TO   1588.  515 

ters  opposed  the  bill  for  the  Abolition  of  Monopolies,  and 
after  tour  days  of  vehement  debate  the  tact  of  Elizabeth 
taught  her  to  give  way.  She  acted  with  her  usual  ability, 
declared  her  previous  ignorance  of  the  existence  of  the  evil, 
thanked  the  House  for  its  interference,  and  quashed  at  a 
single  blow  every  monopoly  that  she  had  granted. 

Section  VI.— The  Armada.    1572—1588. 

[Authorities.—  The  cr°neral  history  of  the  Catholics  is  given  In  the  work  of 
Dodd  ;  see  also  "  The  Troubles  of  our  Catholic  Forefathers,"  published  by  Father 
Morris :  and  for  the  Jesuits,  u  More's  Historiaae  Provincise  Anglican  Societatia 
Jesu  ;  "  to  these  may  be  added  Mr.  Simpson's  life  of  Campian.J 

The  wonderful  growth  in  wealth  and  social  energy  which 
we  have  described  was  accompanied  by  a  remarkable  change 
in  the  religious  temper  of  the  nation.  Silently,  xhe  New 
almost  unconsciously,  England  became  Protestant,  Prctes- 
as  the  traditionary  Catholicism  which  formed  the  t111*1*1^ 
religion  of  three-fourths  of  the  people  at  the  queen's  acces- 
sion died  quietly  away.  At  the  close  of  her  reign  the  only 
parts  of  England  where-the  old  faith  retained  anything  of  its 
former  vigor  were  the  north  and  the  extreme  west,  at  that 
time  the  poorest  and  least  populated  parts  of  the  kingdom. 
One  main  cause  of  the  change  lay  undoubtedly  in  the  gradual 
dying  out  of  the  Catholic  priesthood  and  the  growth  of  a  new 
Protestant  clergy  who  supplied  their  place.  The  older  parish 
priests,  though  they  had  almost  to  a  man  acquiesced  in  the 
changes  of  ritual  and  doctrine  which  the  various  phases  of 
the  Reformation  imposed  upon  them,  remained  in  heart 
utterly  hostile  to  its  spirit.  As  Mary  had  undone  the  changes 
of  Edward,  they  hoped  for  a  Catholic  successor  to  undo  the 
changes  of  Elizabeth  ;  and  in  the  meantime  they  were  content 
to  wear  the  surplice  instead  of  the  chasuble,  and  to  use  the 
Communion-office  instead  of  the  Mass-book.  But  if  they 
were  forced  to  read  the  Homilies  from  the  pulpit,  the  spirit 
of  their  teaching  remained  unchanged  ;  and  it  was  easy  for 
them  to  cast  contempt  on  the  new  services,  till  they  seemed 
to  old-fashioned  worshipers  a  mere  "Christmas  game." 
But  the  lapse  of  twenty  years  did  its  work  in  emptying  par- 
sonage after  parsonage.  In  1579  the  queen  folt  strong 
enough  to  enforce  for  the  first  time  a  general  compliance  with 


616  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  Act  of  Uniformity  ;  and  the  jealous  supervision  of  Parker 
and"  the  bishops  ensured  an  inner  as  well  as  an  outer  con- 
formity to  the  established  faith  in  the  clergy  who  took  the 
place  of  the  dying  priesthood.  The  new  parsons  were  for 
the  most  part  not  merely  Protestant  in  belief  and  teaching; 
but  ultra-Protestant.  The  old  restrictions  on  the  use  of  the 
pulpit  were  silently  .removed  as  the  need  for  them  passed 
away,  and  the  zeal  of  the  young  ministers  showed  itself  in 
an  assiduous  preaching  which  molded  in  their  own  fashion 
the  religious  ideas  of  the  new  generation.  But  their  char- 
acter had  even  a  greater  influence  than  their  preaching. 
Under  Henry  the  priests  had  for  the  most  part  been  ignorant 
and  sensual  men  ;  and  the  character  of  the  clergy  appointed 
by  the  greedy  Protestants  under  Edward  or  in  the  first  years 
of  Elizabeth's  reign  was  even  worse  than  that  of  their  Cath- 
olic rivals.  But  the  energy  of  the  successive  Primates, 
seconded  as  it  was  by  the  general  increase  of  zeal  and  moral" 
it/  at  the  time,  did  its  work  ;  and  by  the  close  of  Elizabeth's 
reign  the  moral  temper  as  well  as  the  social  character  of  the 
clergy  had  greatly  changed.  Scholars  like  Hooker  could 
now  be  found  in  the  ranks  of  the  priesthood,  and  the  grosser 
scandals  which  disgraced  the  clergy  as  a  body  for  the  most 
part  disappeared.  It  was  impossible  for  a  Puritan  libeler 
to  bring  against  the  ministers  of  Elizabeth's  reign  the  charges 
of  drunkenness  and  immorality  which  Protestant  libelers  had 
been  able  to  bring  against  the  priesthood  of  Henry's.  But 
the  influence  of  the  new  clergy  was  backed  by  a  general  rev- 
olution in  English  thought.  We  have  already  watched  the 
first  upgrowth  of  the  new  literature  which  was  to  find  its 
highest  types  in  Shakspere  and  Bacon.  The  grammar  schools 
were  diffusing  a  new  knowledge  and  mental  energy  through 
the  middle  classes  and  among  the  country  gentry.  The  tone 
of  the  Universities,  no  unfair  test  of  the  tone  of  the  nation 
at  large,  changed  wholly  as  the  queen's  reign  went  on.  At 
Its  opening  Oxford  was  "a  nest  of  Papists,"  and  sent  its 
Lest  scholars  to  feed  the  Catholic  seminaries.  At  its  close 
'the  University  was  a  hot-bed  of  Puritanism,  where  the  fiercest 
tenets  of  Calvin  reigned  supreme.  The  movement  was  no 
doubt  hastened  by  the  political  circumstances  of  the  time. 
'Under  the  rule  of  Elizabeth  loyalty  became  more  ard  more 
a  passion  among  Englishmen;  and  the  Bull  of  Deposition 


THE  ARMADA.     1572  TO   1588.  517 

placed  Rome  in  the  forefront  of  Elizabeth's  foes.  The  con- 
spiracies which  festered  around  Mary  were  laid  to  the  Pope'fc 
charge  ;  he  was  known  to  be  pressing  on  Franco  and  on  Spain 
the  invasion  and  conquest  of  the  heretic  kingdom  ;  he  was 
soon  to  bless  the  Armada.  Every  day  made  it  harder  for  a 
Catholic  to  reconcile  Catholicism  with  loyalty  to  his  queen 
or  devotion  to  his  country  ;  and  the  mass  of  men,  who  are 
moved  by  sentiment  rather  than  by  reason,  swung  slowly 
round  to  the  side  which,  whatever  its  religious  significance 
might  be.  was  the  side  of  patriotism,  of  liberty  against  tyranny, 
of  England  against  Spain.  A  new  impulse  was  given  to  this 
silent  drift  of  religious  opinion  by  the  atrocities  which  marked 
the  Catholic  triumph  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel.  The 
horror  of  Alva's  butcheries,  or  of  the  massacre  in  Paris  on 
St.  Bartholomew's  day,  revived  the  memories  of  the  blood- 
shed under  Mary.  The  tale  of  Protestant  sufferings  \vas  told 
with  a  wonderful  pathos  and  picturesqneness  by  John  Foxe, 
an  exile  during  the  persecution  ;  and  his  "  Book  of  Martyrs," 
which  was  set  up  by  royal  order  in  the  churches  for  public 
reading,  passed  from  the  churches  to  the  shelves  of  every 
English  household.  The  trading  classes  of  the  towns  had 
been  the  first  to  embrace  the  doctrines  of  the  Reformation, 
but  their  Protestantism  became  a  passion  as  the  refugees  of 
the  Continent  brought  to  shop  and  market  their  tale  of  out- 
rage and  blood.  Thousands  of  Flemish  exiles  found  a  refuge 
in  the  Cinque  Ports,  a  third  of  the  Antwerp  merchants  were 
seen  pacing  the  New  London  Exchange,  and  a  Church  of 
French  Huguenots  found  a  home  which  it  still  retains  in  the 
crypt  of  Canterbury  Cathedral. 

In  her   ecclesiastical  policy  Elizabeth   trusted  mainly  to 
time  ;  and  time,  as  we  have  seen,  justified  her  trust.     Her 
system  of  compromise  both  in  faith  and  worship,  of        n,e 
quietly  replacing  the  old  priesthood  as  it  died  out    Sem'.nary 
by  Protestant  ministers,  of  wearying  recusants  into     Priests, 
at  least  outer  conformity  with  the  state- religion  and  attendance 
on  the  state-services  by  fines — a  policy  aided,  no  doubt,  by 
the  moral  influences  we  have  described — was  gradually  bring- 
ing England  round  to  a  new  religious  front.     But  the  decay 
of  Catholicism  appealed  strongly  to  the  new  spirit  of  Catholic 
zeal  which,  in  its  despair  of  aid  from  Catholic  princes,  \V;H 
now  girding  itself  for  its  own  bitter  struggle  with  heresy. 


518  HISTORY  OP   THE*  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Dr.  Allen,  a  scholar  who  had  been  driven  from  Oxford  by 
the  test  prescribed  by  the  Act  of  Uniformity,  had  foreseen 
the  results  of  the  dying  out  of  the  Marian  priests,  and  had 
set  up  a  seminary  at  Douay  to  supply  their  place.  The 
new  college,  liberally  supported  by  the  Catholic  peers,  and 
supplied  with  pupils  by  a  stream  of  refugees  from  Oxford  and 
the  English  grammar  schools,  soon  landed  its  "  seminary 
priests"  on  English  shores  ;  and  few  as  they  were  at  first, 
their  presence  was  at  once  felt  in  the  check  which  it  gave  to 
the  gradual  reconciliation  of  the  Catholic  gentry  to  the 
English  Church.  No  check  could  have  been  more  galling  to 
Elizabeth,  and  her  resentment  was  quickened  by  the  sense 
of  danger.  She  had  accepted  the  Bull  of  Deposition  as  a 
declaration  of  war  on  the  part  of  the  Papacy,  and  she  viewed 
the  Douay  priests  with  some  justice  as  its  political  emissaries. 
The  comparative  security  of  the  Catholics  from  active  perse- 
cution during  the  early  part  of  her  reign  had  arisen  partly 
from  the  sympathy  and  connivance  of  the  gentry  who  acted 
as  justices  of  the  peace,  but  still  more  from  her  own  religious 
indifference.  But  the  Test  Act  placed  the  magistracy  in 
Protestant  hands  ;  and  as  Elizabeth  passed  from  indifference 
to  suspicion  and  from  suspicion  to  terror  she  put  less  res- 
traint on  the  bigotry  around  her.  In  quitting  Euston  Hall, 
which  she  had  visited  in  one  of  her  pilgrimages,  the  queen 
gave  its  master,  young  Rookwood,  thanks  for  his  entertain- 
ment and  her  hand  to  kiss.  "But  my  Lord  Chamberlain 
nobly  and  gravely  understanding  that  Rookwood  was  excom- 
municate" for  non-attendance  at  church,  "cal.led  him  before 
him,  demanded  of  him  how  he  durst  presume  to  attempt  her 
royal  presence,  he  unfit  to  accompany  any  Christian  person, 
forthwith  said  that  he  was  fitter  for  a  pair  of  stocks,  com- 
manded him  out  of  Court,  and  yet  to  attend  the  Council's 
pleasure."  The  Council's  pleasure  was  seen  in  his  committal 
to  the  town  prison  at  Norwich,  while  "  seven  more  gentle- 
men of  worship"  were  fortunate  enough  to  escape  with  a 
simple  sentence  of  arrest  at  their  own  homes.  The  queen's 
terror  became  a  panic  in  the  nation  at  large.  The  few  priests 
who  landed  from  Douay  were  multiplied  into  an  army  of 
Papal  emissaries  despatched  to  sow  treason  and  revolt 
throughout  the  land.  Parliament,  which  the  working  of 
the  Test  Act  had  made  a  wholly  Protestant  body,  save  for  the 


THE   ARMADA.      1572  TO   1588.  519 

presence  of  a  few  Catholics  among  the  peers,  was  summoned 
to  meet  the  new  danger,  and  declared  the  landing  of  these 
priests  and  the  harboring  of  them  to  be  treason. 

The  act  proved  no  idle  menace  ;  and  the  execution  of  Ctith- 
bert  Mayne,  a  young  priest  who  was  arrested  in  Cornwall 
with  the  Papal  Bull  of  Deposition  hidden  about 
him,  gave  a  terrible  indication  of  the  character  of 
the  struggle  upon  which  Elizabeth  was  about  to 
enter.  She  was  far,  indeed,  from  any  purpose  of  religious 
persecution  ;  she  boasted  of  her  abstinence  from  any  inter- 
ference with  men's  consciences ;  and  Cecil,  in  his  official 
defense  of  her  policy,  while  declaring  freedom  of  worship  to 
be  incompatible  with  religious  order,  boldly  asserted  the  right 
of  every  English  subject  to  perfect  freedom  of  religious 
opinion.  To  modern  eyes  there  is  something  even  more  re- 
volting than  open  persecution  in  the  policy  which  branded 
every  Catholic  priest  as  a  traitor,  and  all  Catholic  worship  as 
disloyalty  ;  but  the  first  step  towards  toleration  was  won 
when  the  queen  rested  her  system  of  repression  on  purely 
political  grounds.  If  Elizabeth  was  a  persecutor,  she  was 
the  first  English  ruler  who  felt  the  charge  of  religious  perse- 
cution to  be  a  stigma  on  her  rule.  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that 
there  was  a  real  political  danger  in  the  new  missionaries. 
Allen  was  a  restless  conspirator,  and  the  work  of  his  seminary 
priests  was  meant  to  aid  a  new  plan  of  the  Papacy  for  the  con- 
quest of  England.  And  to  the  efforts  of  the  seminary  priests 
were  now  added  those  of  Jesuit  missionaries.  A  select  few 
of  the  Oxford  refugees  at  Dotiay  joined  the  order  of  the 
Jesuits,  whose  members  were  already  famous  for  their  blind 
devotion  to  the  will  and  judgments  of  Rome  ;  and  the  two 
ablest  and  most  eloquent  of  these  exiles,  Campian,  once  a 
fellow  of  St.  John's,  and  Parsons,  once  a  fellow  of  Balliol, 
were  chosen  as  the  heads  of  a  Jesuit  mission  in  England. 
For  the  moment  their  success  was  amazing.  The  eagerness 
shown  to  hear  Campian  was  so  great  that  in  spite  of  the 
denunciations  of  the  Government  he  was  able  to  preach  with 
hardly  a  show  of  concealment  to  a  large  audience  at  Smith- 
field.  From  London  the  missionaries  wandered  in  the  dis- 
guise of  captains  or  serving-men,  sometimes  even  in  the  cas- 
sock of  the  English  clergy,  through  many  of  the  counties ; 
and  wherever  they  went  the  zeal  of  the  Catholic  gentry  re- 


520  HISTOEY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

vived..  .  The  list  of  nobles  reconciled  to  the  old  faith  by  these 
wandering  apostles  was  headed  by  the  name  of  Lord  Oxford, 
Cecil's  own  son-in-law  and  the  proudest  among  English  peers. 

The  success  of  the  Jesuits  in  undoing  Elizabeth's  work  of 
compromise  was  shown  in  a  more  public  way  by  the  growing 

Th"?  Prot-  withdrawal  of  the  Catholics  from  attendance  at 
cstxnt  the  worship  of  the  English  Church.  The  panic 
Terror,  of  the  Protestants  and  of  the  Parliament  outran 
even  the  real  greatness  of  the  danger.  The  little  group  of 
missionaries  was  magnified  by  popular  fancy  in  to  a  host  of  dis- 
guised Jesuits  ;  and  the  invasion  of  this  imaginary  host  was 
met  by  the  seizure  and  torture  of  as  many  priests  as  the 
Government  could  lay  hands  on,  the  imprisonment  of  recu- 
sants, and  the  securing  of  the  prominent  Catholics  throughout 
the  country;  and  by  statutes  which  prohibited  the  saying 
of  Mass  even  in  private  houses,  increased  the  fine  on  recusants 
tp  twenty  pounds  a  month,  and  enacted  that  "all  persons, 
pretending  to  any  power  of  absolving  subjects  from  their 
allegiance,  or  practising  to  withdraw  them  to  the  Romish 
religion  with  all  persons  after  the  present  session  willingly  so 
absolved  or  reconciled  to  the  See  of  Rome,  shall  be  guilty  of 
High  Treason/'  The  way  in  which  the  vast  powers  conferred 
on -the  Crown  by  this  statute  were  used  by  Elizabeth  was  not 
only  characteristic  in  itself,  but  important  as  at  once  defining 
the  policy  to  which,  in  theory  at  least,  her  successors  adhered 
for  more  than  a  hundred  years.  Few  laymen  were  brought 
to  the  bar  and  none  to  the  block  under  its  provisions.  The 
oppression  of  the  Catholic  gentry  was  limited  to  an  exaction, 
more  or  less  rigorous  at  diiferent  times,  of  the  fines  for  re- 
cusancy or  non-attendance  at  public  worship.  The  work  of 
bloodshed  was  reserved  wholly  for  priests,  and  under  Elizabeth 
this  work  was  done  with  a  ruthless  energy  which  for  the 
moment  crushed  the  Catholic  reaction.  The  Jesuits  were 
trucked  by  pursuivants  and  spies,  dragged  from  their  hiding- 
places,  and  sent  in  batches  to  the  Tower.  So  hot  was  the 
pursuit  that  Parsons  was  forced  to  fly  across  the  Channel  ; 
while  Campian  was  brought  a  prisoner  through  the  streets  of 
London  amidst  the  howling  of  the  mob,  and  placed  at  the 
bar  on  the  charge  of  treason.  "  Our  religion  only  is  our 
crime,"  was  a  plea  which  galled  his  judges  ;  but  the  political, 
danger  of  the  Jesuit  preaching  was  disclosed  in  his  evasion. 


THE   ARMADA.      1572  TO  1588.  521 

of  any  direct  reply  when  questioned  as  to  his  belief  in  the 
validity  of  the  excommunication  mid  deposition  of  the  queen 
by  the  Papal  See.  The  death  of  Cumpian  was  the  prelude  to 
a  steady,  pitiless  effort  at  the  extermination  of  his  class.  If 
we  adopt  the  Catholic  estimate  of  the  time,  the  twenty  years 
which  followed  saw  the  execution  of  two  hundred  priests, 
while  a  yet  greater  number  perished  in  the  filthy  and  fever- 
stricken  jails  into  which  tliey  were  plunged.  The  work  of 
reconciliation  to  Rome  was  arrested  by  this  ruthless  energy  ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  work  which  the  priests  had 
effected  could  not  be  undone.  The  system  of  quiet  compul- 
sion and  conciliation  to  which  Elizabeth  had  trusted  for  the 
religious  reunion  of  her  subjects  was  foiled  ;  and  the  English 
Catholics,  fined,  imprisoned  at  every  crisis  of  national  danger, 
and  deprived  of  their  teachers  by  the  prison  and  the  gibbet, 
were  severed  more  hopelessly  than  ever  from  the  national 
Church.  A  fresh  impulse  was  thus  given  to  the  growing 
Current  of  opinion  which  was  to  bring  England  at  last  to 
recognize  the  right  of  every  man  to  freedom  both  of  con- 
science and  of  worship.  What  Protestantism  had  first  done 
under  Mary,  Catholicism  was  doing  under  Elizabeth.  It  was 
deepening  the  sense  of  personal  religion.  It  was  revealing  in 
men  who  had  cowered  before  the  might  of  kingship  a  power 
greyer  than  the  might  of  kings.  It  was  breaking  the  spell 
which  the  monarchy  had  laid  on  the  imagination  of  the 
people.  The  Crown  ceased  to  seem  irresistible  before  a  pas- 
sion for  religious  and  political  liberty  which  gained  vigor 
from  the  dungeon  of  the  Catholic  priest  as  from  that  of  the 
Protestant  zealot. 

But  if  a  fierce  religious  struggle  was  at  hand,  men  felt  that 
behind  this  lay  a  yet  fiercer  political  struggle.     Philip's  hosts 
were  looming  over  sea,  and  the  horrors  of  for-    _.... 
ein  invasion  seemed  about  to  be  added  to  the 


horrors  of  civil  war.  Spain  was  at  this  moment 
the  mightiest  of  European  powers.  The  discoveries  of  Col- 
umbus had  given  it  the  New  World  of  the  West  ;  the  con- 
quests of  Cortes  and  Pizarro  poured  into  its  treasury  the 
plunder  of  Mexico  and  Peru  ;  its  galleons  brought  the  rich 
produce  of  the  Indies,  their  gold,  their  jewels,  their  ingots  of 
silver  to  the  .harbor  of  Cadiz.  To  the  New  World  its  king 
added  the  fairest  and  wealthiest  portions  of  the  Old  ;  he  was 


522  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

master  of  Naples  and  Milan,  the  richest  and  the  most  fertile 
districts  of  Italy  ;  of  the  busy  provinces  of  the  Low  Countries, 
of  Flanders,  the  great  manufacturing  districts  of  the  time, 
and  of  Antwerp,  which  had  become  the  central  mart  for  the 
commerce  of  the  world.  His  native  kingdom,  poor  as  it  was, 
supplied  him  with  the  steadiest  and  the  most  daring  soldiers 
that  the  world  had  seen  since  the  fall  of  the  Eoman  Empire. 
The  renown  of  the  Spanish  infantry  had  been  growing  from 
the  day  when  it  flung  off  the  onset  of  the  French  chivalry  on 
the  field  of  Ravenna  ;  and  the  Spanish  generals  stood  without 
rivals  in  their  military  skill,  as  they  stood  without  rivals  in 
their  ruthless  cruelty.  The  whole,  too,  of  this  enormous 
power  was  massed  in  the  hands  of  a  single  man.  Served  as 
he  was  by  able  statesmen  and  subtle  diplomatists,  Philip  of 
Spain  was  his  own  sole  minister  ;  laboring  day  after  day,  like 
a  clerk,  through  the  long  years  of  his  reign,  amidst  the  pa- 
pers which  crowded  his  closet ;  but  resolute  to  let  nothing 
pass  without  his  supervision,  and  to  suffer  nothing  to  be  done 
save  by  his  express  command.  It  was  his  boast  that  every- 
where in  the  vast  compass  of  his  dominions  he  was  "an  ab- 
solute king."  It  was  to  realize  this  idea  of  unshackled  power 
that  he  crushed  the  liberties  of  Aragon,  as  his  father  had 
crushed  the  liberties  of  Castille,  and  sent  Alva  to  tread  under- 
foot the  constitutional  freedom  of  the  Low  Countries.  His 
bigotry  went  hand  in  hand  with  his  thirst  for  rule.  Italy  and 
Spain  lay  hushed  beneath  the  terror  of  the  Inquisition,  while 
Flanders  was  being  purged  of  heresy  by  the  stake  and  the 
sword.  The  shadow  of  this  gigantic  power  fell  like  a  deadly 
blight  over  Europe.  The  new  Protestantism,  like  the  new 
spirit  of  political  liberty,  suw  its  real  foe  in  Philip.  It  was 
Spain,  rather  than  the  Guises,  against  which  Coligni  and  the 
Huguenots  struggled  in  vain  ;  it  was  Spain  with  which  Wil- 
liam of  Orange  was  wrestling  for  religious  and  civil  freedom  ; 
it  was  Spain  which  was  soon  to  plunge  Germany  into  the 
chaos  of  the  Thirty  Years*  War,  and  to  which  the  Catholic 
world  had  for  twenty  years  been  looking,  and  looking  in  vain, 
for  a  victory  over  heresy  in  England.  Vast,  in  fact,  as 
Philip's  resources  were,  they  were  drained  by  the  yet  vaster 
schemes  of  ambition  into  which  his  religion  and  his  greed  of 
power,  as  well  as  the  wide  distribution  of  his  dominions,  per- 
petually drew  him.  To  coerce  the  weaker  States  of  Italy,  to 


THE  ARMADA.      1572  TO   1588.  523 

command  the  Mediterranean,  to  preserve  his  influence  in 
Germany,  to  support  Catholicism  in  France,  to  crush  heresy 
in  Flanders,  to  despatch  one  Armada  against  the  Turk  and 
another  against  Elizabeth,  were  aims  mighty  enough  to  ex- 
haust even  the  power  of  the  Spanish  Monarchy.  But  it  was 
rather  on  the  character  of  Philip  than  on  the  exhaustion  of 
his  treasury  that  Elizabeth  counted  for  success  in  the  struggle 
which  had  so  long  been  going  on  between  them.  The  king's 
temper  was  slow,  cautious  even  to  timidity,  losing  itself  con- 
tinually in  delays,  in  hesitations,  in  anticipating  remote  perils, 
in  waiting  for  distant  chances  ;  and  on  the  slowness  and  hesi- 
tation of  his  temper  his  rival  had  been  playing  ever  since  she 
mounted  the  throne.  The  diplomatic  contest  between  the 
two  was  like  the  fight  which  England  was  soon  to  see  between 
the  ponderous  Spanish  galleon  and  the  light  pinnace  of  the 
buccaneers.  The  agility,  the  sudden  changes  of  Elizabeth,  her 
lies,  her  mystifications,  though  they  failed  to  deceive  Philip, 
puzzled  and  impeded  his  mind.  But  amidst  all  this  cloud  of 
intrigue  the  actual  course  of  their  relations  had  been  clear  and 
simple.  In  her  earlier  days  France  rivaled  Spain  in  its 
greatness,  and  Elizabeth  simply  played  the  two  rivals  off 
against,  one  another.  She  hindered  France  from  giving  effec- 
tive aid  to  Mary  Stuart  by  threats  of  an  alliance  with  Spain  ; 
while  she  induced  Philip  to  wink  at  her  heresy,  and  to  dis- 
courage the  risings  of  the  English  Catholics,  by  playing  on 
his  dread  of  her  alliance  with  France.  But  as  the  tide  of  re- 
ligious passion  which  had  so  long  been  held  in  check  broke 
at  last  over  its  banks,  the  political  face  of  Europe  changed. 
The  Low  Countries,  driven  to  despair  by  the  greed  and  per- 
secution of  Alva,  rose  in  a  revolt  which  after  strange  alterna- 
tions of  fortune  gave  to  Europe  the  Republic  of  the  United 
Provinces.  The  opening  which  their  rising  afforded  was 
seized  by  the  Huguenot  leaders  of  Franco  as  a  political  engine 
to  break  the  power  which  Catharine  of  Medicis  exercised 
over  Charles  the  Ninth,  and  to  set  aside  her  policy  of  religions 
balance  by  placing  France  at  the  head  of  Protestantism  in  the 
West.  Charles  listened  to  the  counsels  of  Coligni,  who  pressed 
for  war  upon  Philip  and  promised  the  support  of  the  Hugue- 
nots in  an  invasion  of  the  Low  Countries.  Never  had  a  fairer 
prospect  opened  to  French  ambition.  Catharine  however  saw 
ruin  for  the  monarchy  iu  a  France  at  once  Protestant  and  free. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

She  threw  herself  on  the  side  of  the  Guises,  and  ensured  their 
triumph  by  lending  herself  to  the  massacre  of  the  Protestants 
on  St.  Bartholomew's  day.  But  though  the  long-gathering 
clouds  of  religious  hatred  had  broken,  Elizabeth  trusted  to  her 
dexterity  to  keep  out  of  the  storm.  France  plunged  madly 
back  into  the  chaos  of  civil  war,  and  the  Low  Countries  were 
left  to  cope  single-handed  with  Spain.  Whatever  enthusiasm 
the  heroic  struggle  of  the  Prince  of  Orange  excited  among 
her  subjects,  it  failed  to  move  Elizabeth  even  for  an  instant 
from  the  path  of  cold  self-interest.  To  her  the  revolt  cf  the 
Netherlands  was  simply  "  a  bridle  of  Spain,  which  kept  war 
out  of  our  own  gate."  At  the  darkest  moment  of  the  con- 
test, when  Alva had  won  back  all  but  Holland  and  Zealand,  and 
even  William  of  Orange  despaired,  the  queen  bent  her  ener- 
gies to  prevent  him  from  finding  succor  in  France.  That  the 
Provinces  could  in  the  end  withstand  Philip,  neither  she  nor 
any  English  statesman  believed.  They  held  that  the  struggle 
must  close  either  in  utter  subjection  of  the  Netherlands,  or 
in  their  selling  themselves  for  aid  to  France  ;  and  the  acces- 
sion of  power  which  either  result  must  give  to  one  of  her  two 
Catholic  foes  the  queen  was  eager  to  avert.  Her  plan  for 
averting  it  was  by  forcing  the  Provinces  to  accept  the  terms 
offered  by  Spain — a  restoration,  that  is,  of  their  constitutional 
privileges  on  condition  of  their  submission  to  the  Church. 
Peace  on  such  a  footing  would  not  only  restore  English  com- 
merce, which  suffered  from  the  war  ;  it  would  leave  the 
Netherlands  still  formidable  as  a  weapon  against  Philip.  The 
freedom  of  the  Provinces  would  be  saved  ;  and  the  religious 
question  involved  in  a  fresh  submission  to  the  yoke  of  Cath- 
olicism was  one  which  Elizabeth  was  incapable  of  appreciat- 
ing. To  her  the  steady  refusal  of  William  the  Silent  to  sac- 
rifice his  faith  was  as  unintelligible  as  the  steady  bigotry  of 
Philip  in  demanding  such  a  sacrifice.  It  was  of  more  im- 
mediate consequence  that  Philip's  anxiety  to  avoid  provoking 
an  intervention  on  the  part  of  England  which  would  destroy 
all  hope  of  his  success  in  Flanders,  left  her  tranquil  at  home- 
Had  revolt  in  England  prospered  he  was  ready  to  reap  the 
fruits  of  other  men's  labors  ;  and  he  made  no  objection  to 
plots  for  the  seizure  or  assassination  of  the  queen.  But  this 
stake  was  too  vast  to  risk  an  attack  while  she  sat  firmly  on 
her  throne;  and,  the  cry  of  the  English  Catholics,  or  the 


THE  ARMADA.    1572  TO  1588:  525 

pressure  of  the  Pope,  had  as  yet  failed  to  drive  the  Spanish 
king  into  strife  with  Elizabeth. 

The  control  of  events  was,  however,  passing  from  the  hands 
of  statesmen  and  diplomatists  ;  and  the  long  period  of  sus- 
pense which  their  policy  had  won  was  ending  in 
the  clash  of  national  and  political  passions.  The  TJle  Sea" 
rising  fanaticism  of  the  Catholic  world  wasbreak- 
ing  down  the  caution  and  hesitation  of  Philip,  while  Eng- 
land PCI  aside  the  balanced  neutrality  of  her  queen  and 
pushed  boldly  forward  to  a  contest  which  it  felt  to  be  inevita- 
ble. The  public  opinion,  to  which  the  queen  was  so  sensi- 
tive, took  every  day  a  bolder  and  more  decided  tone.  Her 
cold  indifference  to  the  heroic  struggle  in  Flanders  was  more 
than  com  ensated  by  the  enthusiasm  it  excited  among  the 
nation  at  large.  The  earlier  Flemish  refugees  found  a  refuge 
in  the  Cinque  Ports.  The  exiled  merchants  of  Antwerp  were 
welcomed  by  the  merchants  of  London.  While  Elizabeth 
dribbled  out  her  secret  aid  to  the  Prince  of  Orange,  the  Lon- 
don traders  sent  him  half-a  million  from  their  own  purses, 
a  sum  equal  to  a  year's  revenue  of  the  Crown.  Volunteers 
stole  across  the  Channel  in  increasing  numbers  to  the  aid  of 
the  Dutch,  till  the  five  hundred  Englishmen  who  fought  in 
the  beginning  of  the  struggle  rose  to  a  brigade  of  five  thousand, 
whose  bravery  turned  one  of  the  most  critical  battles  of  the 
war.  Dutch  privateers  found  shelter  in  English  ports,  and 
English  vessels  hoisted  the  flag  of  the  States  for  a  dash  at  the 
Spanish  traders.  Protestant  fervor  rose  steadily  as  "  the  best 
captains  and  soldiers"  returned  from  the  campaigns  in  the 
Low  Countries  to  tell  of  Alva's  atrocities,  or  as  privateers 
brought  back  tales  of  English  seamen  who  had  been  seized  in 
Spain  and  the  New  World,  to  linger  amidst  the  tortures  of 
the  Inquisition,  or  to  die  in  its  fires.  In  the  presence  of  this 
steady  drift  of  popular  passion  the  diplomacy  of  Elizabeth 
became  of  little  moment.  When  she  sought  to  put  a  check 
on  Philip  by  one  of  her  last  matrimonial  intrigues,  which 
threatened  England  with  a  Catholic  sovereign  in  the  Duke  of 
Anjou,  a  younger  son  of  the  hated  Catharine  of  Medicis.  the 
popular  indignation  rose  suddenly  into  a  cry  against  '•  a  Pop- 
ish King,"  which  the  queen  dared  not  defy.  If  Elizabeth 
was  resolute  for  peace,  England  was  resolute  for  war.  A  new 
courage  had  arisen  since  the  beginning  of  her  reign,  when 


526  HISTORY   OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Cecil  and  the  queen  stood  alone  in  their  belief  in  England's 
strength,  and  when  the  diplomatists  of  Europe  regarded  her 
obstinate  defiance  of  Philip's  counsels  as  "madness.''  The 
whole  people  had  caught  the  self-confidence  and  daring  of 
their  queen.  The  seamen  of  the  southern  coast  had  long 
been  carrying  on  a  half-piratical  war  on  their  own  account. 
Four  years  after  Elizabeth's  accession  the  Channel  swarmed 
with  "  sea-dogs,"  as  they  were  called,  who  sailed  under  letters 
of  marque  from  the  Prince  of  Conde  and  the  Huguenot 
leaders,  and  took  heed  neither  of  the  complaints  of  the  French 
Court  nor  of  Elizabeth's  own  attempts  at  repression.  Her 
efforts  failed  before  the  connivance  of  every  man  along  the 
coast,  of  the  very  port-officers  of  the  Crown  who  made  profit 
out  of  the  spoil,  and  of  the  gentry  of  the  west,  who  were  hand 
and  glove  with  the  adventurers.  They  broke  above  all  against 
the  national  craving  for  open  fight  with  Spain,  with  the 
Protestant  craving  for  open  fight  with  Catholicism.  Young 
Englishmen  crossed  the  sea  to  serve  under  Conde  or  Henry  of 
Navarre.  The  war  in  the  Netherlands  drew  hundreds  of 
Protestants  to  the  field.  The  suspension  of  the  French  con- 
test only  drove  the  sea-dogs  to  the  West  Indies  ;  for  the  Papal 
decree  which  gave  the  New  World  to  Spain,  and  the  threats 
of  Philip  against  any  Protestant  who  should  visit  its  seas,  fell 
idly  on  the  ears  of  English  seamen.  It  was  in  vain  that  their 
trading  vessels  were  seized,  and  the  sailors  flung  into  the  dun- 
geons of  the  Inquisition,  "  laden  with  irons,  without  sight  of 
sun  or  moon."  The  profits  of  the  trade  were  large  enough  to 
counteract  its  perils  ;  and  the  bigotry  of  Philip  was  met  by 
a  bigotry  as  merciless  as  his  own.  The  Puritanism  of  the 
sea-dogs  went  hand  in  hand  with  their  love  of  adventure. 
To  break  through  the  Catholic  monopoly  of  the  New  World, 
to  kill  Spaniards,  to  sell  negroes,  to  sack  gold-ships,  were  in 
these  men's  minds  a  seemly  work  for  the  "  elect  of  God." 
The  name  of  Francis  Drake  became  the  terror  of  the  Spanish 
Indies.  In  Drake  a  Protestant  fanaticism  was  united  with  a 
splendid  daring.  He  conceived  the  design  of  penetrating 
into  the  Pacific,  whose  waters  had  never  seen  an  English 
flag  ;  and,  backed  by  a  little  company  of  adventurers,  he  set 
sail  for  the  southern  seas  in  a  vessel  hardly  as  big  as  a  Chan- 
nel schooner,  with  a  few  yet  smaller  companions  who  fell 
away  before  the  storms  and  perils  of  the  voyage.  Bat  Drake 


THE   ARMADA.      1572   TO   1588.  627 

with  his  one  ship  and  eighty  men  held  boldly  on  ;  and  pass- 
ing the  Straits  of  Magellan,  untraversed  as  yet  by  any  English- 
man, swept  the  unguarded  coast  of  Chili  and  Peru, "loaded  his 
bark  with  the  gold-dust  and  silver-ingots  of  Potosi,  and  with 
the  pearls,  emeralds,  and  diamonds  which  formed  the  cargo 
of  the  great  galleon  that  sailed  once  a  year  from  Lima  to 
Cadiz.  With  spoils  of  above  half-a-million  in  value  the  dar- 
ing adventurer  steered  undauntedly  for  the  Moluccas,  rounded 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  after  completing  the  circuit  of 
the  globe  dropped  anchor  again  in  Plymouth  harbor. 

The  romantic  daring  of  Drake's  voyage,  as  well  as  the  vast- 
ness  of  his  spoil,  roused  a  general  enthusiasm  throujhout 
England.  Bat  the  welcome  he  received  from  TheDe^th 
Elizabeth  on  his  return  was  accepted  by  Philip  of  Mary 
as  an  outrage  which  could  only  be  expiated  by  Stuart 
war.  Sluggish  as  it  was,  the  blood  of  the  Spanish  king  was 
fired  at  last  by  the  defiance  with  which  Elizabeth  received  all 
demands  for  redress.  She  met  a  request  for  Drake's  surrender 
by  knighting  the  freebooter,  and  by  wearing  in  her  crown  the 
jewels  he  had  offered  her  as  a  present.  When  the  Spanish 
ambassador  threatened  that  "matters  would  come  to  the 
cannon,"  she  replied  "quietly,  in  her  most  natural  voice,  as 
if  she  were  telling  a  common  story, "wrote  Mendoza,  "  that  if 
I  used  threats  of  that  kind  she  would  fling  me  into  a  dungeon." 
Outraged  as  Philip  was,  she  believed  that  with  the  Nether- 
lands still  in  revolt  and  France  longing  for  her  alliance  to 
enable  it  to  seize  them,  the  king  could  not  afford  to  quarrel 
with  her.  But  the  sense  of  personal  wrong,  and  the  outcry  of 
the  Catholic  world  against  his  selfish  reluctance  to  avenge  the 
blood  of  its  martyrs,  at  last  told  on  the  Spanish  king,  and  the 
first  vessels  of  an  armada  which  was  destined  for  the  conquest 
of  England  began  to  gather  in  the  Tagus.  Resentment  and 
fanaticism  indeed  were  backed  by  a  cool  policy.  His  conquest 
of  Portugal  had  almost  doubled  his  power.  It  gave  him  the 
one  navy  that  as  yet  rivaled  his  own.  With  trie  Portuguese 
colonies  his  flag  claimed  mastery  in  the  Indian  and  the  Pacific 
seas,  as  it  claimed  mastery  in  the  Atlantic  and  Mediterranean  ; 
and  he  had  now  to  shut  Englishman  and  heretic  not  only 
out  of  the  New  World  of  the  West  but  out  of  the  lucrative 
traffic  with  the  East.  In  the  Netherlands  too  and  in  France 
all  seemed  to  go  well  for  Philip's  schemes.  His  forces  uiider 


628  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Parma  had  steadily  won  their  way  in  the  Low  Countries,  and 
a  more  fatal  blow  had  been  dealt  at  his  rebellious  subjects 
in  the  assassination  of  William  of  Orange  ;  while  all  danger 
of  French  intervention  passed  away  with  the  death  of  the 
Duke  of  Anjou,  which  left  Henry  of  Navarre,  the  leader  of 
the  Huguenot  party,  heir  of  the  crown  of  France.  To  pre- 
vent the  triumph  of  heresy  in  the  succession  of  a  Protestant 
king,  the  Guises  and  the  French  Catholics  rose  at  once  in 
arms  ;  but  the  Holy  League  which  they  formed  rested  mainly 
on  the  support  of  Philip,  and  so  long  as  he  supplied  them 
with  men  and  money,  he  was  secure  on  the  side  of  France. 
It  was  at  this  moment  that  Parrna  won  his  crowning  triumph 
in  the  capture  of  Antwerp  ;  its  fall  after  a  gallant  resistance 
convinced  even  Elizabeth  of  the  need  for  action  if  the  one 
"bridle  to  Spain  which  kept  war  out  of  our  own  gate"  was 
to  be  saved.  Lord  Leicester  was  hurried  to  the  Flemish 
coast  with  8,000  men.  In  a  yet  bolder  spirit  of  defiance 
Francis  Drake  was  suffered  to  set  sail  with  a  fleet  of  twenty- 
five  vessels  for  the  Spanish  Main.  Drake's  voyage  was  a 
series  of  triumphs.  The  wrongs  inflicted  on  English  seamen 
by  the  Inquisition  were  requited  by  the  burning  of  the  cities 
of  St.  Domingo  and  Carthagena.  The  coasts  of  Cuba  and 
Florida  were  plundered,  and  though  the  gold  fleet  escaped 
him,  Drake  returned  with  a  heavy  booty.  But  oniy  one  dis- 
astrous skirmish  at  Zutphen,  the  fight  in  which  Sidney  fell, 
broke  the.inactionof  Leicester's  forces,  while  Elizabeth  strove 
vainly  to  use  the  presence  of  his  army  to  negotiate  a  peace 
between  Philip  and  the  States.  Meanwhile  dangers,  thickened 
round  her  in  England  itself.  Maddened  by  persecution,  by  the 
helplessness  of  rebellion  within  or  of  deliverance  from  without, 
the  fiercer  Catholics  listened  to  schemes  of  assassination  to 
which  the  murder  of  William  of  Orange  lent  a  terrible  signifi- 
cance. The  detection  of  Somerville,  a  fanatic  who  had  re- 
ceived the  Host  before  setting  out  for  London  "  to  shoot  the 
queen  with  his  dagg,"was  followed  by  measures  of  natural 
severity,  by  the  flight  and  arrest  of  Catholic  gentry  and  peers, 
by  a  vigorous  purification  of  the  Inns  of  Court  where  a  few 
Catholics  lingered,  and  by  the  despatch  of  fresh  batches  of 
prieststo  the  block.  The  trial  and  death  of  Parry,  a  member 
of  the  House  of  Commons  who  had  served  in  the  queen's  house- 
hold, on  a  similar  charge,  fed  the  general  panic.  Parliament 


THE  ARMADA.      1572  TO   1588.  529 

met  in  a  transport  of  horror  and  loyalty.  All  Jesuits  and 
seminary  priests  were  banished  from  the  realm  on  pain  of 
death.  A  bill  for  the  security  of  the  queen  disqualiKe  1  any 
claimant  of  the  succession  who  instigated  subjects  to  rebellion 
or  hurt  to  the  queen's  person  from  ever  succeeding  to  the 
Crown.  The  threat  was  aimed  at  Mary  Stuart.  Weary  of  her 
long  restraint,  of  her  failure  to  rouse  Philip  or  Scotland  to 
aid  her,  of  the  baffled  revolt  of  the  English  Catholics  and  the 
baffled  intrigues  of  the  Jesuits,  she  had  bent  for  a  moment  to 
submission.  "  Let  mo  go,"  she  wrote  to  Elizabeth  ;  "  let  me 
retire  from  this  island  to  some  solitude  where  I  may  prepare 
my  soul  to  die.  Grant  this,  and  I  will  sign  away  every  right 
which  either  I  or  mine  can  claim."  But  the  cry  was  useless, 
and  her  despair  found  a  new  and  more  terrible  hope  in  the 
plots  against  Elizabeth's  life.  She  knew  and  approved  the 
vow  of  Anthony  Babington  and  a  band  of  young  Catholics, 
for  the  most  part  connected  with  the  royal  household,  to  krll 
the  queen  ;  but  plot  and  approval  alike  passed  through  Wal- 
singham's  hands,  and  the  seizure  of  Mary's  correspondence 
revealed  her  guilt.  In  spite  of  her  protest  a  Commission  of 
Peers  sat  as  her  judges  at  Fotheringay  Castle;  and  their 
verdict  of  "guilty"  annihilated  under  the  provisions  of  the 
recent  statute  her  claim  to  the  Crown.  The  streets  of  London 
blazed  with  bonfires,  and  peals  rang  out  from  steeple  to  steeple 
at  the  news  of  her  condemnation  ;  but,  in  spite  of  the  prayer  of 
Parliament  for  her  execution,  and  the  pressure  of  theCoumil, 
Elizabeth  shrank  from  her  death.  The  force  of  public  opin- 
ion, however,  was  now  carrying  all  before  it,  and  the  unani- 
mous demand  of  her  people  wrested  at  last  a  sullen  consent 
from  the  queen.  She  iamg  the  warrant  signed  upon  the 
floor,  and  the  Council  took  on  themselves  the  responsibility 
of  executing  it.  Mary  died  on  n  ..caffold  which  was  erected 
in  "he  castle-hall  at  FJ  .heringay  a-  dauntlessly  as  she  had 
lived.  "  Do  not  weep,"  she  scid  to  her  ladies,  "  I  have  given 
my  word  for  you."  "  j.'cli  my  friends,''  she  charged  Melville, 
"that  I  die  a  good  Catholic.'* 

Ths  blow  was  hardly  struck  before  Elizabeth  turned  with 
fury  on  the  ministers  who  had  forced  her  hand.  Cecil,  who 
had  now  become  Lord  Burleigh,  was  for  a  while 
disgraced  :  and  Davison,  who  carried  the  warrant 
to  the  Council,  was  flung  into  the  Tower  to  atone 
34 


530  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

for  an  act  which  shattered  the  policy  of  the  queen.  The 
death  of  Mary  Stuart  in  fact  seemed  to  remove  the  last  ob- 
stacle out  of  Philip's  way,  by  putting  an  end  to  the  divisions 
of  the  English  Catholics.  To  him,  as  to  the  nearest  heir  in 
blood  who  was  of  the  Catholic  Faith,  Mary  bequeathed  her 
rights  to  the  Crown,  and  the  hopes  of  her  adherents  were 
from  that  moment  bound  up  in  the  success  of  Spain.  Philip 
no  longer  needed  pressure  to  induce  him  to  act.  Drake's 
triumph  had  taught  him  that  the  conquest  of  England  was 
needful  for  the  security  of  his  dominion  in  the  New  World. 
The  presence  of  an  English  army  in  Flanders  convinced  him 
that  the  road  to  the  conquest  of  the  States  lay  through  Eng- 
land itself.  The  operations  of  Parma  therefore  in  the  Low 
Countries  were  suspended  with  a  view  to  the  greater  enter- 
prise. Vessels  and  supplies  for  the  fleet  which  had  for  three 
years  been  gathering  in  the  Tagus  were  collected  from  every 
port  of  the  Spanish  coast.  Only  the  dread  of  a  counter-attack 
from  France,  where  the  fortunes  of  the  League  were  waver- 
ing, held  Philip  back.  Butthenews  of  the  coming  Armada 
called  Drake  again  to  action.  He  set  sail  with  thirty  small 
barks,  burned  the  storeships  and  galleys  in  the  harbor  of 
Cadiz,  stormed  the  ports  of  the  Faro,  and  was  only  foiled  in 
his  aim  of  attacking  the  Armada  itself  by  orders  from  home. 
A  descent  npon  Corunria  however  completed  what  Drake 
called  his  "singeing  of  the  Spanish  king's  beard."  Eliza- 
beth used  the  daring  blow  to  back  her  negotiations  for  peace  ; 
but  the  Spanish  pride  had  been  touched  to  the  quick.  Amidst 
the  exchange  of  protocols  Parma  gathered  seventeen  thou- 
sand men  for  the  coming  invasion,  collected  a  fleet  of  flat- 
bottomed  transports  at  Dunkirk,  and  wared  impatiently  for 
the  Armada  to  protect  his  crossing.  But  the  attack  of  Drake, 
the  death  of  its  first  admiral,  and  the  winter  storms  delayed 
the  fleet  from  sailing.  The  fear  of  .France  held  it  back  vet 

o  .  »/ 

more  effectually  ;  but  in  the  spring  Philip's  patience  was  re- 
warded. The  League  was  triumphant,  and  the  king  a  pris- 
oner in  its  hands.  The  Armada  at  once  set  sail  from  Lisbon, 
but  it  had  hardly  started  when  a  gale  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay 
drove  its  scattered  vessels  into  Ferrol.  It  was  only  on  the 
nineteenth  of  July  that  the  sails  of  the  Armada  were  seen 
from  the  Lizard,  and  the  English  beacons  flared  out  their 
alarm  along  the  coast.  The  news  found  England  ready. 


THE   ARMADA.      1572   TO   1588.  531 

An  army  was  mustering  under  Leicester  at  Tilbury,  the 
militia  of  the  midland  counties  were  gathering  to  London, 
while  those  of  the  south  and  east  were  held  in  readiness  to 
meet  a  descent  on  either  shore.  Had  Parma  landed  on  the 
earliest  day  he  purposed,  he  would  have  found  his  way  to 
London  barred  by  a  force  stronger  than  his  own,  a  force  too 
of  men  in  whose  ranks  were  many  who  had  already  crossed 
pikes  on  equal  terms  with  his  best  infantry  in  Flanders. 
"  When  I  shall  have  landed,"  he  warned  his  master,  "  I  must 
fight  battle  after  battle,  I  shall  lose  men  by  wounds  and  dis- 
ease, I  must  leave  detachments  behind  me  to  keep  open  my 
communications  ;  and  in  a  short  time  the  body  of  my  army 
will  become  so  weak  that  not  only  1  may  be  unable  to  ad- 
vance in  the  face  of  the  enemy,  and  time  may  be  given  to  the 
heretics  and  your  Majesty's  other  enemies  to  interfere,  but 
there  may  fall  out  some  notable  inconveniences,  with  a  loss 
of  everything,  and  I  be  unable  to  remedy  it."  Even  had 
Parma  landed,  in  fact,  the  only  real  chance  of  Spanish  suc- 
cess lay  in  a  Catholic  rising  ;  and  at  this  crisis  patriotism 
proved  stronger  than  religious  fanaticism  in  the  hearts  of  the 
English  Catholics.  Catholic  lords  brought  their  vessels  up 
alongside  of  Drake  and  Lord  Howard,  and  Catholic  gentry 
led  their  tenantry  to  the  muster  at  Tilbury.  But  to  secure 
a  landing  at  all,  the  Spaniards  had  to  be  masters  of  the  Chan- 
nel ;  and  in  the  Channel  lay  an  English  fleet  resolved  to 
struggle  hard  for  the  mastery.  As  the  Armada  sailed  on  in 
a  broad  crescent  past  Plymouth,  moving  towards  its  point  of 
junction  with  Parma  at  Calais,  the  vessels  which  had  gathered 
under  Lord  Howard  of  Effingham  slipped  out  of  the  bay  and 
hung  with  the  wind  upon  their  rear.  In  numbers  the  two 
forces  were  strangely  unequal  ;  the  English  fleet  counted 
only  80  vessels  against  the  149  which  composed  the  Armada. 
In  size  of  ships  the  disproportion  was  even  greater.  Fifty 
of  the  English  vessels,  including  the  squadron  of  the  Lord 
Admiral  and  the  craft  of  the  volunteers,  were  little  bigger 
than  yachts  of  the  present  day.  Even  of  the  thirty  queen's 
ships  which  formed  its  main  body,  there  were  only  four  which 
equaled  in  tonnage  the  smallest  of  the  Spanish  galleons. 
Sixty-five  of  these  gulleous  formed  the  most  formidable  half 
of  the  Spanish  fleet  ;  and  four  galleys,  four  galleusses,  armed 
with  fifty  guns  apiece,  fifty-six  armed  merchantmen,  and 


532  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

twenty  pinnaces,  made  up  the  rest.  The  Armada  wai  pro 
vided  with  2,500  cannons,  and  a  vast  store  of  provisions  ;  it 
had  on  board  8,000  seamen,  and  more  than  20,000  soldiers  ; 
and  if  a  court-favorite,  the  Duke  of  Medina  Sicionia,  had  been 
placed  at  its  head,  he  was  supported  by  the  ablest  staff  of 
naval  officers  which  Spain  possessed.  Small  however  as  the 
English  ships  were,  they  were  in  perfect  trim  ;  they  sailed 
two  feet  for  the  Spaniard's  one,  they  were  manned  witli  9,000 
hardy  seamen,  and  their  Admiral  was  backed  by  a  crowd  of 
captains  who  had  won  fame  in  the  Spanish  seas.  With  him 
was  Hawkins,  who  had  been  the  first  to  break  into  the 
charmed  circle  of  the  Indies  ;  Frobisher,  the  hero  of  the 
northwest  passage  ;  and  above  all  Drake,  who  held  command 
of  the  privateers.  They  had  won  too  the  advantage  of  the 
wind,  and,  closing  in  or  drawing  off  as  they  would,  the 
lightly-handled  English  vessels,  which  fired  four  shots  to  the 
Spaniards'  one,  hung  boldly  on  the  rear  of  the  great  fleet  as 
it  moved  along  the  Channel.  "  The  feathers  of  the  Span- 
iards," in  the  phrase  of  the  English  seamen,  were  "  plucked 
one  by  one."  Galleon  after  galleon  was  sunk,  boarded,  driven 
on  shore  ;  and  yet  Medina  Sidonia  failed  in  bringing  his 
pursuers  to  a  close  engagement.  Now  halting,  now  moving 
slowly  on,  the  running  fight  between  the  two  fleets  lasted 
throughout  the  week,  till  the  Armada  dropped  anchor  in 
Calais  roads.  The  time  had  now  come  for  sharper  work  if 
the  junction  of  the  Armada  with  Parma  was  to  be  prevented  ; 
for,  demoralized  as  the  Spaniards  had  been  by  the  merciless 
chase,  their  loss  in  ships  had  not  been  great,  while,  though 
the  numbers  of  English  ships  had  grown,  their  supplies  of 
food  and  ammunition  were  fast  running  out.  Howard  re- 
solved to  force  an  engagement,  and,  lighting  eight  fire-ships 
at  midnight,  sent  them  down  with  the  tide  upon  the  Spanish 
line.  The  galleons  at  on'ce  cut  their  cables,  and  stood  out  in 
panic  to  sea,  drifting  with  the  wind  in  a  long  line  off  Grave- 
lines.  Drake  resolved  at  all  costs  to  prevent  their  return.  At 
dawn  the  English  ships  closed  fairly  in,  and  almost  their  last 
cartridge  was  spent  ere  the  sun  went  down.  Three  great  gal- 
leons had  sunk,  three  had  drifted  helplessly  on  to  the  Flemish 
coast;  but  the  bulk  of  the  Spanish  vessels  remained,  and 
even  to  Drake  the  fleet  seemed  •'  wonderful  great  and  strong/' 
"Within  the  Armada  itself,  however,  all  hope  was  gone,' 


THE  ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  533 

Huddled  together  by  the  wind  and  the  deadly  English  fire, 
their  sails  torn,  their  masts  shot  away,  the  crowded  galleons 
had  become  mere  slaughter-houses.  Four  thousand  men  hud 
fallen,  and  bravely  as  the  seamen  fought  they  were  cowed  by 
the  terrible  butchery.  Medina  himself  was  in  despair.  "  We 
are  lost,  Seflor  Oqnenda,"  he  cried  to  his  bravest  captain  ; 
"what  are  we  to  do?"  "  Let  others  talk  of  being  lost/' 
replied  Oquenda,  '-your  Excellency  has  only  to  order  upfivsii 
cartridge."  B.it  Oquenda  stojd  alone,  and  a  council  of  war 
resolved  on  retreat  to  Spain  by  the  one  course  open,  that  of 
a  circuit  round  the  Orkneys.  "  Never  anything  pleased  me 
better,"  wrote  Drake,  "  than  seeing  the  enemy  fly  with  a 
southerly  wind  to  the  northwards.  Have  a  good  eye  to  the 
Prince  of  Parma,  for,  with  the  grace  of  God.  if  we  like,  1 
doubt  not  ere  it  be  long  so  to  handle  the  matter  with  the 
Duke  of  Sidonia,  as  he  shall  wish  himself  at  St.  Mary  Port 
among  his  orange  trees."  But  the  work  of  destruction  was 
reserved  for  a  mightier  foe  than  Drake.  Supplies  fell  short 
and  the  English  vessels  were  forced  to  give  up  the  chase; 
but  the  Spanish  ships  which  remained  had  no  sooner  reached 
the  Orkneys  than  the  storms  of  the  northern  seas  broke  oil 
them  with  a  fury  before  which  all  concert  and  union  disap- 
peared. Fifty  reached  Coranna,  bearing  ten  thousand  men 
stricken  with  pestilence  and  death.  Of  the  rest  some  were 
sunk,  some  dashed  to  pieces  against  the  Irish  cliffs.  The 
wreckers  of  the  Orkneys  and  the  Faroes,  the  clansmen  of  the 
Scottish  Isles,  the  kernes  of  Donegal  and  Galway,  all  had 
their  part  in  the  work  of  murder  and  robbery.  Eight  thou- 
sand Spaniards  perished  between  the  Giant's  Causeway  and 
the  Blaskets.  On  a  strand  near  Sligo  an  English  captain 
numbered  eleven  hundred  corpses  which  had  been  cast  up  by 
the  sea.  The  flower  of  the  Spanish  nobility,  who  had  been 
sent  on  the  new  crusade  under  Alonzo  da  Leyva,  after  twice 
suffering  shipwreck,  put  a  third  time  to  sea  to  founder  ou  a 
reef  near  Dunluce. 


Section  VII.— The  Elizabethan  Poets. 

\Authoritles.—  For  (i  sreneral  account  of  this  period,  se?  Mr.  Morley's  admirable 
"First  Sketch  of  English  Literature,"  Hallam's  "  Literary  History."  M.  Taine'S 
"History  of  English  Literature,"  etc.  Mr.  Craik  has  elaborately  illustrated  th« 
workaof  Spenser,  and  full  details  of  the  history  of  our  early  drama  may  VMJ  found 


534  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

In  Mr.  Collier's  "  History  of  English  Dramatic  Literature  to  the  time  of  Shak- 
spere."  Malone's  inquiry  remains  the  completes!  investigation  into  the  history 
of  Shakspere's  dramas  ;  aud  the  works  of  Mr.  Armytage  Brown  and  Mr.  Gerald 
Massey  contain  the  latest  theories  as  to  the  Sonnets.  For  Ben  Jonson  and  his 
fellows,  see  their  works  with  the  notes  of  Gifford,  etc.  The  fullest  account  of 
Lord  Baron  will  be  found  in  his  "Life  and  Letters,'' now  published  with  his 
"Works,"  by  Mr.  SpedJing,  whose  apologetic  tones  may  be  contrasted  with  the 
verdict  of  Lord  Macaulay  (•'  Essay  on  Lord  Bacon  ")  and  with  the  more  judicious 
judgment  of  Mr.  Gardiner  (•'  History  of  England.")  See  also  Mr.  Lewes's  "  His- 
tory of  Philosophy."] 

We  have  already  watched  the  revival  of  English  letters 
during  the  earlier  half  of  Elizabeth's  reign.  The  general 
The  Eliza-  awakening  of  national  life,  the  increase  of  wealth, 
betiEn  of  refinement  aud  leisure,  which  marked  that 
Poet  y.  period,  had  been  accompanied,  as  we  have  seen, 
by  a  quickening  of  English  intelligence,  which  found  vent  in 
an  upgrowth  of  grammar  schools,  in  the  new  impulse  given 
to  classical  learning  at  the  Universities,  in  a  passion  for 
translations  which  familiarized  all  England  with  the  master- 
pieces of  Italy  and  Greece,  and  above  all  in  the  crude  but 
vigorous  efforts  of  Sackville  and  Lyly  after  a  nobler  poetry 
and  prose.  But  to  the  national  and  local  influences  which 
were  telling  on  English  literature  was  added  that  of  the 
restlessness  and  curiosity  which  characterized  the  age.  The 
sphere  of  human  interest  was  widened  as  it  has  never  been 
widened  before  or  since  by  the  revelation  of  a  new  heaven 
and  a  new  earth.  It  was  only  in  the  later  years  of  the  six- 
teenth century  that  the  discoveries  of  Copernicus  were  brought 
home  to  the  general  intelligence  of  the  world  by  Kepler  and 
Galileo,  or  that  the  daring  of  the  Buccaneers  broke  through 
the  veil  which  the  greed  of  Spain  had  drawn  across  the  New 
World  of  Columbus.  Hardly  inferior  to  these  revelations  as 
a  source  of  intellectual  impulse  was  the  sudden  and  pictur- 
esque way  in  which  the  various  races  of  the  world  were 
brought  face  to  face  with  one  another  through  the  universal 
passion  for  foreign  travel.  While  the  red  tribes  of  the  West 
were  described  by  Amerigo  Vespucci,  and  the  strange  civil- 
ization of  Mexico  and  Peru  disclosed  by  Cortes  and  Pizarro, 
the  voyages  of  the  Portuguese  threw  open  the  older  splendors 
of  the  East,  and  the  story  of  India  and  China  was  told  for 
the  first  time  to  Christendom  by  Maffei  and  Mendoza. 
England  took  her  full  part  in  this  work  of  discovery.  Jen- 
kinson,  an  English  traveler,  made  his  way  to  Bokhara. 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  635 

Willonghby  brought  back  Muscovy  to  the  knowledge  of 
Western  Europe.  English  mariners  penetrated  among  the 
Esquimaux,  or  settled  in  Virginia.  Drake  circumnavigated 
the  globe.  The  «•  Collection  of  Voyages,"  which  was 
published  by  Hakluyt,  not  only  disclosed  the  vastness  of  the 
world  itself,  but  the  infinite  number  of  the  race?  of  mankind 
the  variety  of  their  laws,  their  customs,  their  religions,  their 
very  instincts.  We  see  the  influence  of  this  new  und  wider 
knowledge  of  the  world,  not  only  in  the  life  and  richness 
which  it  gave  to  the  imagination  of  the  time,  but  in  the  im- 
mense interest  which  from  this  moment  attached  itself  to 
Man.  Shakspere's  conception  of  Caliban,  like  the  question- 
ings of  Montaigne,  marks  the  beginning  of  a  new  and  a  truer, 
because  a  more  inductive,  philosophy  of  human  nature  and 
human  history.  The  fascination  exercised  by  the  study  of 
human  character  showed  itself  in  the  essays  of  Bacon,  and 
yet  more  in  the  wonderful  popularity  of  the  drama.  And 
to  these  larger  and  world-wide  sources  of  poetic  powers  was 
added  in  England  the  impulse  which  sprang  from  national 
triumph,  from  the  victory  over  the  Armada,  the  deliverance 
from  Spain,  the  rolling  away  of  the  Catholic  terror  which  had 
hung  like  a  cloud  over  the  hopes  of  the  people.  With  its 
new  sense  of  security,  of  national  energy  and  national  power, 
the  whole  aspect  of  England  suddenly  changed.  As  yet  the 
interest  of  Elizabeth's  reign  hail  been  political  and  material ; 
the  stage  had  been  crowded  with  statesmen  and  warriors, 
with  Cecils  and  Walsinghams  and  Drakes.  Literature  had 
hardly  found  a  place  in  the  glories  of  the  time.  But  from 
the  moment  when  the  Armada  drifted  back  broken  to  Ferrol, 
the  figures  of  warriors  and  statesmen  were  dwarfed  by  the 
grander  figures  of  poets  and  philosophers.  Amidst  the  throng 
in  Elizabeth's  antechamber  the  noblest  form  is  that  of  the 
singer  who  lays  the  "Faerie  Queen  "  at  her  feet,  or  of  the 
young  lawyer  who  muses  amid  the  splendors  of  the  presence 
over  the  problems  of  the  "  Novum  Organum."  The  triumph 
at  Cadiz,  the  conquest,  of  Ireland,  pass  unheeded  as  we  watch 
Hooker  building  up  his  "Ecclesiastical  Polity"  among  the 
sheepfolds,  or  the  genius  of  Shakspere  rising  year  by  y«  ar 
into  supremer  grandeur  in  a  rude  theater  beside  the  Thames. 
The  full  glory  of  the  new  literature  broke  on  England  with 
Edmund  Spenser.  We  know  little  of  his  life  ;  he  was  born  in 


HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

East  London  of  poor  parents,  but  connected  with  the 
Spencers  of  Althorpe,  even  then — as  he  proudly  says — "  a 

house  of  ancient  fame/'  He  studied  as  a  sizar  at 
Spenser.  Cambridge,  and  quitted  the  University  while  still 

a  boy  to  live  as  a  tutor  in  the  north  ;  but  after 
some  years  of  obscure  poverty  the  scorn  of  a  fair  "  Rosalind  " 
drove  him  again  southwards.  A  college  friendship  with 
Gabriel  Harvey  served  to  introduce  him  to  Lord  Leicester, 
who  sent  him  as  his  envoy  into  France,  and  in  whose  service 
he  first  became  acquainted  with  Leicester's  nephew,  Sir 
^hilip  Sidney.  From  Sidney's  house  at  Penshurst  came  his 
earliest  work,  the  "Shepherd's  Calendar;"  in  form,  like 
Sidney's  own  "Arcadia,"  a  pastoral,  where  love  and  loyalty 
and  Puritanism  jostled  oddly  with  the  fancied  shepherd  life. 
The  peculiar  melody  and  profuse  imagination  which  the  pas- 
toral disclosed  at  once  placed  its  author  in  the  forefront  of 
living  poets,  but  a  far  greater  work  was  already  in  hand  ;  and 
from  some  words  of  Gabriel  Harvey's  we  see  Spenser  bent  on 
rivaling  Ariosto,  and  even  hoping  "to  overgo"  the  "Or- 
lando Furioso,"  in  his  "  Elvish  Queen."  The  ill-will  or  in- 
difference of  Burleigh,  however,  blasted  the  expectations  he 
had  drawn  from  the  patronage  of  Sidney  or  the  Earl  of 
Leicester,  and  the  favor  with  which  he  had  been  welcomed 
by  the  queen.  Sidney,  himself  in  disgrace  with  Elizabeth, 
withdrew  to  Wilton  to  write  the  "  Arcadia,"  by  his  sister's 
side  ;  and  "  discontent  of  my  long  fruitless  stay  in  princes' 
courts,"  the  poet  tells  us,  "and  expectation  vain  of  idle 
hopes,"  drove  Spenser  at  last  into  exile.  He  followed  Lord 
Grey  as  his  secretary  into  Ireland,  and  remained  there  on  the 
Deputy's  recall  in  the  enjoyment  of  an  office  and  a  grant  of 
land  from  the  forfeited  estates  of  the  Earl  of  Desmond. 
Spenser  had  thus  enrolled  himself  among  the  colonists  to 
whom  England  was  looking  at  the  time  for  the  regeneration 
of  Munster,  and  the  practical  interest  he  took  in  the  "  barren 
soil  where  cold  and  want  and  poverty  do  grow"  was  shown 
by  the  later  publication  of  a  prose  tractate  on  the  condition  and 
government  of  the  island.  It  was  at  Dublin  or  in  his  castle 
of  Kilcolman,  two  miles  from  Doneraile,  "under  the  foote 
of  Mole,  that  mountain  hoar,"  that  he  spent  the  ten  years  in 
whieh  Sidney  died  and  Mary  fell  on  the  scaffold  and  the  Ar- 
mada came  and  went;  and  it  was  in  the  latter  home  that 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  687 

Walter  "Ralegh  found  him  sitting  "  alwaies  idle,"  as  it  seemed 
to  his  restless  friend,  "  among  the  cooly  shades  of  the  green 
alders  by  the  Mulla  s  shore,"  in  a  visit  made  memorable  by 
the  poem  of  "Colin  Clout's  come  home  again."  but  in  the 
J<  idlesse"  and  solitude  of  the  poet's  exile  the  jreat  work  be- 
gun in  the  two  pleasant  years  of  his  stay  at  Penshurst  had  at 
last  taken  form,  and  it  was  to  publish  the  first  three  books  of 
the  "  Faerie  Queeu"  that  Spenser  returned  in  Ralegh's  com- 
pany to  London. 

The  appearance  of  the  "Faerie  Queen"  is  the  one  critical 
event  in  the  annals  of  English  poetry  ;  it  settled  in  fact,  the 
question  whether  there  was  to  be  such  a  thing  as 
English  poetry  or  no.  The  older  national  verse  ^j^^1* 
which  had  blossomed  and  died  in  Caedmon  sprang 
suddenly  into  a  grander  life  in  Chaucer,  but  it  closed  again 
in  a  yet  more  complete  death.  Across  the  Border,  indeed, 
the  Scotch  poets  of  the  fifteenth  century  preserved  something 
of  their  master's  vivacity  and  color,  and  in  England  itself  the 
Italian  poetry  of  the  Renascence  had  of  late  found  echoes  ia 
Surrey  and  Sidney.  The  new  English  drama  too  was  begin- 
ning to  display  its  wonderful  powers,  and  the  work  of  Mar- 
lowe had  already  prepared  the  way  for  the  work  of  Shak- 
spere.  But  bright  as  was  the  promise  of  coming  song,  no 
great  imaginative  poem  had  broken  the  silence  of  English 
literature  for  nearly  two  hundred  years  when  Spencer  landed 
at  Bristol  with  the  "Faerie  Queen."  From  that  moment 
the  stream  of  English  poetry  has  flowed  on  without  a  break. 
There  have  been  time?,  as  in  the  years  which  immediately 
followed,  when  England  has  "  become  a  nest  of  singing 
birds  ;  "  there  have  been  times  when  song  was  scant  and  poor  ; 
but  there  never  has  been  a  time  when  England  was  wholly 
without  a  singer.  The  new  English  verse  has  been  true  to 
the  source  from  which  it  sprang,  and  Spenser  has  always 
been  "  the  poet's  poet."  But  in  his  own  day  he  was  the  poet 
of  England  at  large.  The  "Faerie  Queen"  was  received 
with  a  burst  of  general  welcome.  It  became  "  the  delight  of 
every  accomplished  gentleman,  the  model  of  every  poet,  the 
solace  of  every  soldier."  The  poem  expressed,  indeed,  the 
very  life  of  the  time.  It  was  with  a  true  poetic  instinct  that 
Spenser  fell  back  for  the  framework  of  his  story  on  the  faery 
5vorld  of  Celtic  romance,  whose  wonder  and  mystery  had  in 


538  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

fact  become  the  truest  picture  of  the  wonder  and  mystery 
of  the  world  around  him.  In  the  age  of  Cortes  and  of  Ralegh 
dreamland  had  ceased  to  be  dreamland,  and  no  marvel  or  ad- 
venture that  befell  lady  or  knight  was  stranger  than  the  tales 
which  weather-beaten  mariners  from  the  Southern  Seas  were 
telling  every  day  to  grave  merchants  upon  'Change.  The 
very  incongruities  of  the  story  of  Arthur  and  his  knighthood, 
strangely  as  it  had  been  built  up  out  of  the  rival  efforts  of 
bard  and  jongleur  and  priest,  made  it  the  fittest  vehicle  for 
the  expression  of  the  world  of  incongruous  feeling  which  we 
call  the  Renascence.  To  modern  eyes  perhaps  there  is  some- 
thing grotesque  in  the  strange  medley  of  figures  which  crowd 
the  canvas  of  the  "  Faerie  Queen,"  in  its  fauns  dancing  on 
the  sward  where  knights  have  hurtled  together,  in  its  alter- 
nation of  the  salvage-naen  from  the  New  World  with  the 
satyrs  of  classic  mythology,  in  the  giants,  dwarfs,  and  mon- 
sters of  popular  fancy,  who  jostle  with  the  nymphs  of  Greek 
legend  and  the  damosels  of  medieval  romance.  But,  strange 
as  the  medley  is,  it  reflects  truly  enough  the  stranger  med- 
ley of  warning  ideals  and  irreconcileable  impulses  which  made 
up  the  life  of  Spenser's  contemporaries.  It  was  not  in  the 
"Faerie  Queen"  only,  but  in  the  world  which  it  portrayed, 
that  the  religious  mysticism  of  the"  Middle  Ages  stood  face  to 
face  with  the  intellectual  freedom  of  the  Revival  of  Letters, 
that  asceticism  and  self-denial  cast  their  spell  on  imaginations 
glowing  with  the  sense  of  varied  and  inexhaustible  existence, 
that  the  dreamy  and  poetic  refinement  of  feeling  which  ex- 
pressed itself  in  the  fanciful  unrealities  of  chivalry  co-existed 
with  the  rough  practical  energy  that  sprang  from  an  awaken- 
ing sense  of  human  power,  or  the  lawless  extravagance  of  an 
idealized  friendship  and  love  lived  side  by  side  with  the  moral 
sternness  and  elevation  which  England  was  drawing  from  the 
Reformation  and  the  Bible.  But  strangely  contrasted  as  are 
the  elements  of  the  poem,  they  are  harmonized  by  the  calm- 
ness and  serenity  which  is  the  note  of  the  "  Faerie  Queen." 
The  world  of  the  Renascence  is  around  us,  but  it  is  ordered, 
refined,  and  calmed  by  the  poet's  touch.  The  warmest  scenes 
which  he  borrows  from  the  Italian  verse  of  his  day  are  ideal- 
ized into  purity  ;  the  very  struggle  of  the  men  around  him 
is  lifted  out  of  its  pettier  accidents,  and  raised  into  a  spiritual 
oneness  with  the  struggle  in  the  soul  itself.  There  are 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  639 

allusions  in  plenty  to  contemporary  events,  but  the  contest 
between  Elizabeth  and  Mary  takes  ideal  form  in  that  of  Una 
and  the  false  Duessa,  and  the  clash  of  arms  between  Spain  and 
the  Hugneuots  comes  to  us  faint  and  hushed  through  the 
serener  air.  The  verse,  like  the  story,  rolls  on  as  by  its  own 
natural  po\ver,  without  haste  or  effort  or  delay.  The  gor- 
geous coloring,  the  profuse  and  often  complex  imagery  which 
Spenser's  imagination  lavishes,  leave  no  sense  of  confusion  in 
the  reader's  mind.  Every  figure,  strange  as  it  may  be,  is  seen 
clearly  and  distinctly  as  it  passes  by.  It  is  in  this  calmness, 
this  serenity,  this  spiritual  elevation  of  the  "  Faerie  Queen," 
that  we  feel  the  new  life  of  the  coming  age  molding  into 
ordered  and  harmonious  form  the  life  of  the  Renascence. 
Both  in  its  conception,  and  in  the  way  in  which  this  concep- 
tion is  realized  in  the  portion  of  his  work  which  Spenser  com- 
pleted, his  poem  strikes  the  note  of  the  coming  Puritanism.  In 
his  earlier  pastoral,  the  "  Shepherd's  Calendar,"  the  poet  had 
boldly  taken  his  part  with  the  more  advanced  reformers 
against  the  Church  policy  of  the  Court.  He  had  chosen 
Archbishop  Grindal,  who  was  then  in  disgrace  for  his  Puritan 
sympathies,  as  his  model  of  a  Christian  pastor  ;  and  attacked 
with  sharp  invective  the  pomp  of  the  higher  clergy.  His 
"Faerie  Queen,"  in  its  religious  theory,  is  Puritan  to  the 
core.  The  worst  foe  of  its  "  Red-cross  Knight"  is  the  false 
and  scarlet-clad  Duossa  of  Rome,  who  parts  him  for  a  while 
from  Truth  and  leads  him  to  the  house  of  Pride.  Spenser 
presses  strongly  and  pitilessly  for  the  execution  of  Mary 
Stuart.  No  bitter  word  ever  breaks  the  calm  of  his  verse 
save  when  it  touches  on  the  perils  with  which  Catholicism  was 
environing  England,  perils  before  which  his  knight  must  fall 
"  were  not  that  Heavenly  Grace  doth  him  uphold  and  stead- 
fast Truth  acquite  him  out  of  all."  But  it  is  yet  more  in  the 
temper  and  aim  of  his  work  that  we  catch  the  nobler  and 
deeper  tones  of  English  Puritanism.  In  his  earlier  musings 
at  Penshurst  the  poet  had  purposed  to  surpass  Ariosto,  but 
the  gaiety  of  Ariosto's  song  is  utterly  absent  from  his  own. 
Not  a  ripple  of  laughter  breaks  the  calm  surface  of  Spenser^s 
verse.  He  is  habitually  serious,  and  the  seriousness  of  his 
poetic  tone  reflects  the  seriousness  of  his  poetic  purpose. 
His  aim,  he  tells  us,  was  to  represent  the  moral  virtues,  to 
assign  to  each  its  knightly  patron,  so  that  its  excellence 


540  HISTORY   OF   THE  EHGLISH   PEOPLE. 

might  .be.  expressed  and  its  contrary  vice  trodden  n-nder  foot 
by  deeds  of  arms  and  chivalry.  In  knight  after  knight  of 
the  twelve  he  purposed  to  paint,  lie  wished  to  embody  some 
single  virtue  of  the  virtuous  man  in  its  struggle  with  the 
faults  and  errors  which  specially  beset  it ;  till  in  Arthur,  the 
sum  of  the  whole  company,  man  might  have  been  seen  per- 
fected, iu  his  longing  and  progress  'towards  the  "Faerie 
Queen,"  the  Divine  Glory  which  is  the  true  end  of  human 
effort.  The  largeness  of  his  culture  indeed,  his  exquisite 
sense  of  beauty,  and  above  all  the  very  intensity  of  his  moral 
enthusiasm,  saved  Spenser  from  tne  narrowness  and  exag- 
geration which  often  distorted  goodness  into  unloveliness  in 
the  Puritan.  Christian  as  he  is  to  the  core,  his  Christianity 
is  enriched  and  fertilized  by  the  larger  temper  of  the  Renas- 
cence, as  well  as  by  a  poet's  love  of  the  natural  world  in 
which  the  older  mythologies  struck  their  roots.  Diana  and 
the  gods  of  heathendom  take  a  sacred  tinge  from  the  purer 
sanctities  of  the  new  faith  ;  and  in  one  of  the  greatest  songs 
of  the  "Faerie  Queen,"  the  conception  of  love  widens,  as  it 
widened  in  the  mind  of  a  Greek,  into  the  mighty  thought  of 
khe  productive  energy  of  Nature.  Spenser  borrows  in  fact 
the  dehcrle  and  refined  forms  of  the  Platonist  philosophy  to 
express  his  own  moral  enthusiasm.  Not  only  does  he  love, 
as  others  have  loved,  all  that  is  noble  and  pure  and  of  good 
report,  but  he  is  fired  as  none  before  or  after  him  have  been 
fired  with  a  passionate  sense  of  moral  beauty.  Justice,  Tem- 
perance, Truth,  are  no  mere  names  to  him,  but  real  existence 
to  which  his  whole  nature  clings  with  a  rapturous  affection. 
Outer  beauty  he  believed  to  spring,  and  lovod  because  it 
sprang,  from  the  beauty  of  the. soul  within.  There  was  much 
in  such  a  moral  protest  as  this  to  rouse  dislike  in  any  ;ige, 
but  it  is  the  glory  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth  that,  "  mad  world  " 
as  in  many  ways  it  was,  all  that  was  noble  welcomed  the 
"  Faerie  Queen."  Elizabeth  herself,  says  Spenser,  "to  mine- 
oaten  pipe  inclined  her  ear,"  and  bestowed  a  pension  on  the 
post.  In  1595  he  brought  three  more  books  of  his  poem  to- 
England.  He  returned  to  Ireland,  to  commemorate  his  mar- 
riage in  Sonnets  and  the  most  beautiful  of  bridal  songs,  and 
to  complete  the  "Faerie  Queen"  amongst  love  and  poverty 
and  troubles  from  his  Irish  neighbors.  Bat  these  troubles 
s.oon  took  &  graver  form.  In  1599  Ireland  broke  into  revolt^ 


THE  ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  541 

and  the  poet  escaped  from  his  burning  house  to  fly  to  Eng- 
land, and  to  die  broken-hearted  in  an  inn  at  Westminster." 

If  the  "  Faerie  Queen  "  expressed  the  higher  elements  of 
the  Elizabethan  age,  the  whole  of  that  age,  its  lower  elements 
and  its  higher  alike,  was  expressed  in  the  English  TheEu,^ 
drama.  We  have  already  pointed  out  the  cireum-  bet:un"" 
stances  which  throughout  Europe  were  giving  a  Eram*. 
poetic  impulse  to  the  newly-aroused  intelligence  of  men,  and 
this  impulse  everywhere  took  a  dramatic  shape.  The  artifi- 
cial French  tragedy  which  began  about  this  time  with  Gar- 
nier  was  not,  indeed,  destined  to  exert  any  influence  over 
English  poetry  till  a  later  age;  but  the  influence  of  the 
Italian  comedy,  which  had  begun  half  a  century  earlier  with 
Machiavelli  and  Ariosto,  was  felt  directly  through  the  Novclle, 
or  stories,  which  served  as  plots  for  the  dramatists.  It  left 
its  stamp  indeed  on  some  of  the  worst  characteristics  of  the 
English  stage.  The  features  of  our  drama  that  startled  the 
moral  temper  of  the  time  and  won  the  deadly  hatred  of  the 
Puritan,  its  grossness  and  profanity,  its  tendency  to  scenes  of 
horror  and  crime,  its  profuse  employment  of  cruelty  and 
lust  as  grounds  of  dramatic  action,  its  daring  use  of  the  hor- 
rible and  the  unnatural  whenever  they  enable  it  to  display 
the  more  terrible  and  revolting  sides  of  human  passion,  were 
derived  from  the  Italian  stage.  It  is  doubtful  how  much  the 
English  playwrights  may  have  owed  to  the  Spanish  drama, 
that  under  Lope  and  Cervantes  sprang  suddenly  into  a  gran- 
deur which  almost  rivaled  their  own.  In  the  intermixture 
of  tragedy  and  comedy,  in  the  abandonment  of  the  solemn 
uniformity  of  poetic  diction  for  the  colloquial  language  of 
real  life,  the  use  of  unexpected  incidents,  the  complications 
of  their  plots  and  intrigues,  the  dramas  of  England  and 
Spain  are  remarkably  alike  ;  but  the  likeness  seems  rather  to 
have  sprung  from  a  similarity  in  the  circumstances  to  which 
both  owed  their  rise,  than  from  any  direct  connection  of  tho- 
one  with  the  othar.  The  real  origin  of  the  English  drama, 
in  fact,  lay  not  in  any  influence  from  without,  but  in  the  in- 
fluence of  England  itself.  The  temper  of  the  nation  was 
dramatic.  Ever  since  the  Reformation,  the  Palace,  th? 
Inns  of  Court,  and  the  University  had  been  vying  with  one 
Another  iu  the  production  of  plays  ;  and  so  early  was  tlu-ir 
popularity,  that  even  under  Heury  the  Eighth  it  was  found 


642  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

necessary  to  create  a  "Master  of  the  Revels"  to  supervise 
them.  Every  progress  of  Elizabeth  from  shire  to  shire  was  a 
succession  of  shows  and  interludes.  Dian  with  her  nymphs 
met  the  queen  as  she  returned  from  hunting  ;  Love  presented 
her  with  lii-3  golden  arrow  as  she  passed  through  the  gates  of 
Norwich.  From  the  earlier  years  of  her  reign,  the  new  spirit 
of  the  Renascence  had  been  pouring  itself  into  the  rough  mold 
of  the  Mystery  Plays,  whose  allegorical  virtues  and  vices,  or 
scriptural  heroes  and  heroines,  had  handed  on  the  spirit  of 
the  drama  through  the  Middle  Ages.  Adaptations  from 
classical  pieces  soon  began  to  alternate  with  the  purely  re- 
ligious "Moralities;"  and  an  attempt  at  a  livelier  style  of 
expression  and  invention  appeared  in  the  popular  comedy  of 
"Gammer  Gurton's  Needle  ;"  while  Sackville,  Lord  Dorset, 
in  his  tragedy  of  "  Gorbodnc"  made  a  bold  effort  at  pub- 
limity  of  diction,  and  introduced  the  use  of  blank  verse  as 
the  vehicle  of  dramatic  dialogue.  But  it  was  not  to  these 
tentative  efforts  of  scholars  and  nobles  that  the  English  stage 
was  really  indebted  for  the  amazing  outburst  of  genius,  which 
dates  from  the  moment  when  "  the  Earl  of  Leicester's 
servants"  erected  the  first  public  theater  in  Blackfriars.  It 
was  the  people  itself  that  created  its  Stage.  The  theater, 
indeed,  was  commonly  only  the  courtyard  of  an  inn,  or  a 
mere  booth  such  as  is  still  seen  at  a  country  fair  ;  the  bulk 
of  the  audience  sat  beneath  the  open  sky  in  the  "  pit  "  or 
yard,  a  few  covered  seats  in  the  galleries  which  ran  round  it 
formed  the  boxes  of  the  wealthier  spectators,  while  patrons  and 
nobles  found  scats  upon  the  actual  boards.  All  the  appliances 
were  of  the  roughest  sort :  a  few  flowers  served  to  indicate  a 
garden,  crowds  and  armies  were  represented  by  a  dozen 
scene-shifters  with  swords  and  bucklers,  heroes  rode  in  and 
Out  on  hobby-horses,  and  a  scroll  on  a  post  told  whether  the 
scene  was  at  Athens  or  London.  There  were  no  female  actors, 
and  the  grossness  which  startles  us  in  words  which  fell  from 
women's  lips  took  a  different  color  when  every  woman's  part 
was  acted  by  a  boy.  But  difficulties  such  as  these  were  more 
than  compensated  by  the  popular  character  of  the  drama 
itself.  Rude  as  the  theater  might  be,  all  the  world  was 
there.  The  stage  was  crowded  with  nobles  and  courtiers. 
Apprentices  and  citizens  thronged  the  benches  in  the  yard 
below.  The  rough  mob  of  the  pit  inspired,  as  it  felt,  the 


THE    ELIZABETHAN    POETS.  543 

vigorous  life,  the  rapid  transitions,  the  passionate  energy, 
the  reality,  the  lifelike  medley  and  confusion,  the  racy  dia^ 
logue,  the  chat,  the  wit,  the  pathos,  the  sublimity,  the  rant 
and  buffoonery,  the  coarse  horrors  and  vulgar  bloodshedding, 
the  immense  range  over  all  classes  of  society,  the  intimacy 
with  the  foulest  as  well  as  the  fairest  developments  of  human 
temper,  which  characterized  the  English  stage.  The  new 
drama  represented  "the  very  age  and  body  of  the  time,  his 
form  and  pressure."  The  people  itself  brought  its  nobleness 
and  its  vileness  to  the  boards.  No  stage  was  ever  so  human, 
no  poetic  life  so  intense.  Wild,  reckless,  defiant  of  all  past 
tradition,  of  all  conventional  laws,  the  English  dramatists 
owned  no  teacher,  no  source  of  poetic  inspiration,  but  the 
people  itself. 

Few  events  m  our  literary  history  are  so  startling  as  this 
sudden  rise  of  the  Elizabethan  drama.  The  first  public 
theater,  as  we  have  seen,  was  erected  only  in  the 
middle  of  the  queen's  reign.  Before  the  close  of 
it  eighteen  theaters  existed  in  London  alone. 
Fifty  dramatic  poets,  many  of  the  first  order,  appeared  in  the 
fifty  years  which  precede  the  closing  of  the  theaters  by  the 
Puritans  ;  and  great  as  is  the  number  of  their  works  which  have 
perished,  we  still"  possess  a  hundred  dramas,  all  written 
within  this  period,  and  of  which  at  least  a  half  are  excellent. 
A  glance  at  their  authors  shows  us  that  the  intellectual  quick- 
ening of  the  age  had  now  reached  the  mass  of  the  people. 
Almost  all  of  the  new  playwrights  were  fairly  educated,  and 
many  were  University  men.  But,  instead  of  courtly  singers 
of  the  Sidney  and  Spenser  sort,  we  see  the  advent  of  the 
"  poor  scholar."  The  earlier  dramatists,  such  as  Nash,  Peele, 
Kyd,  Greene,  or  Marlowe,  were  for  the  most  part  poor,  and 
reckless  in  their  poverty  ;  wild  livers,  defiant  of  law  or  com- 
mon fame,  in  revolt  against  the  usages  and  religion  of  their 
day,  "atheists"  in  general  repute,  "holding  Moses  for  a 
juggler,"  haunting  the  brother  and  the  alehouse,  and  dying 
starved  or  in  tavern  brawls.  But  with  their  appearance  began 
the  Elizabethan  drama.  The  few  plays  which  have  reached 
us  of  an  earlier  date  are  either  cold  imitations  of  the 
classical  and  Italian  comedy,  or  rude  farces  like  "  ifaljih 
'Roister  Doister,"  or  tragedies  such  as  "  Gorboduc,"  where, 
poetic  as  occasional  passages  may  be,  there  is  little  promise 


544  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  dramatic  development.  But  in  the  year  which  preceded 
the  corning  of  the  Armada  the  whole  aspect  of  the  stage 
suddenly  changes,  and  the  new  dramatists  range  themselves 
around  two  men  of  very  different  genius,  Robert  Greene  and 
Christopher  Marlowe.  Of  Greene,  as  the  creator  of  our 
lighter  English  prose,  we  have  already  spoken.  But  his  work 
as  a  poet  was  of  yet  greater  importance,  for  his  keen  percep- 
tion of  character  and  the  relations  of  social  life,  the  playful- 
ness of  his  fancy,  and  the  liveliness  of  his  style  exerted  an  in- 
fluence on  his  contemporaries,  which  was  equaled  by  that  of 
none  but  Marlowe  and  Peele.  No  figure  better  paints  the 
group  ol  young  playwrights.  He  left  Cambridge  to  travel 
through  Italy  and  Spain,  and  to  bring  back  the  debauchery 
of  the  one  and  the  skepticism  of  the  other.  In  the  words  of 
remorse  he  wrote  before  his  death  he  paints  himself  as  a 
drunkard  and  a  roysterer,  winning  money  only  by  ceaseless 
pamphlets  and  plays  to  waste  it  on  wine  and  women,  and 
drinking  the  cup  of  life  to  the  dregs.  Hell  and  the  after- 
world  were  the  butts  of  his  ceaseless  mockery.  If  he  had  not 
feared  the  judges  of  the  Qaeen's  Courts  more  than  he  feared 
God,  he  said,  in  bitter  jest,  he  should  often  have  turned  cut- 
purse.  He  married,  and  loved  his  wife,  but  she  was  soon 
deserted  ;  and  the  wretched  profligate  found  himself  again 
plunged  into  excesses  which  he  loathed,  though  he  could  not 
live  without  them.  But  wild  as  was  the  life  of  Greene,  his 
pen  was  pure.  He  is  steadily  on  virtue's  side  in  the  love 
pamphlets  and  novelettes  he  poured  out  in  endless  succes- 
sion, and  whose  plots  were  dramatized  by  the  school  which 
gathered  round  him.  The  life  of  Marlowe  was  as  riotous, 
his  skepticism  even  more  daring,  than  the  life  and 
skepticism  of  Greene.  His  early  death  alone  saved  him, 
in  all  probability,  from  a  prosecution  for  atheism.  He  was 
charged  with  calling  Moses  a  juggler,  and  with  boasting  that, 
if  he  undertook  to  write  a  new  religion,  it  should  be  a  better 
religion  than  the  Christianity  he  saw  around  him.  But  he 
stood  far  ahead  of  his  fellows  as  a  creator  of  English  tragedy. 
Born  at  the  opening  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  the  son  of  a  Can- 
terbury shoemaker,  but  educated  at  Cambridge,  Marlowe 
burst  on  the  world  in  the  year  which  preceded  the  triumph 
over  the  Armada,  with  a  play  which  at  once  wrought  a  revolu- 
tion in  the  English  stage.  Bombastic  and  extravagant  as  it 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  545 

was,  and  extravagance  readied  its  height  in  the  scene  where 
captive  kings,  tiie  •'  pampered  jades  of  Asia,"  drew  their 
conqueror's  car  across  the  stage,  "  Tambtirlaiue,"  not  only 
indicated  the  revolt  of  the  new  drama  against  the  timid  in- 
anities of  Euphuism,  but  gave  an  earnest  of  that  imaginative 
daring,  the  secret  of  whieli  Marlowe  was  to  bequeatn  to  the 
playwrights  who  followed  him.  He  perished  at  twenty-nine 
in  a  shameful  brawl,  but  in  his  brief  career  he  had  struck  the 
grander  notes  of  the  coming  drama.  His  Jew  of  Malta  was 
the  herald  of  Shylock.  He  opened  in  "  Edward  the  Second  " 
the  series  of  historical  plays  which  gave  us  "Caesar"  and 
"  Richard  the  Third."  Riotous,  grotesque,  and  full  of  a  mad 
thirst  for  pleasure  as  it  is,  his  "  Faustus"  was  the  first  dra- 
matic attempt  to  touch  the  great  problem  of  the  relations  of 
man  to  the  unseen  world,  to  paint  the  power  of  doubt  in  a 
temper  leavened  with  superstition,  the  daring  of  human  defi- 
ance in  a  heart  abandoned  to  despair.  Extravagant,  unequal, 
stooping  even  to  the  ridiculous  in  his  cumbrous  and  vulgar 
buffoonery,  there  is  a  force  in  Marlowe,  a  conscious  grandeur 
of  tone,  a  range  of  passion,  which  sets  him  above  all  his  con- 
temporaries save  one.  In  the  higher  qualities  of  imagination, 
as  in  the  majesty  and  sweetness  of  his  "  mighty  line,"  he  is 
inferior  to  Sliakspere  alone. 

A  few  daring  jests,  a  brawl  and  a  fatal  stab,  make  up  the 
life  of  Mailowc  ;  but  even  details  such  as  these  are  wanting 
to  the  life  of  William  Shakspere.  Of  hardly  any 
great  poet,  indeed,  do  we  know  so  little.  For  the  Shakspere. 
Etory  of  his  youth  we  have  only  one  or  two  tri- 
fling legends,  and  these  almost  certainly  false.  Not  n  single 
letter  or  characteristic  saying,  not  one  of  the  jests  "  spoken 
at  the  Mermaid,"  hardly  a  single  anecdote,  remained  to 
illustrate  his  busy  life  in  London.  His  look  and  figure  in 
later  age  have  been  preserved  by  the  bust  over  his  tomb  nt 
Stratford,  and  a  hundred  years  after  his  death  ho  was  still 
remembered  in  his  native  town  ;  but  the  minute  diligence  of 
the  inquirers  of  the  Georgian  time  was  able  to  glean  hardly 
a  single  detail,  even  of  the  most  trivial  order,  which  could 
throw  li?ht  upon  the  years  of  retirement  before  his  death. 
It  is  owing  perhaps  to  the  harmony  and  unity  of  his  temper 
that  no  salient  peculiarity  seems  to  have  left  its  trace  on  the 
memory  of  his  contemporaries  ;  it  is  the  very  grandeur  of  his 
35 


546  HISTORY   OJT  .THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

genius  which  precludes  us  from  discovering  any  personal 
trait  in  his  works.  His  supposed  self-revelation  in  the  Son- 
nets is  so  obscure  that  only  a  few  outlines  can  be  traced  even 
by  the  boldest  conjecture.  In  his  dramas  he  is  all  his  charac- 
ters, and  his  characters  range  over  all  mankind.  There  is 
not  one,  or  the  act  or  word  of  one,  that  we  can  identify 
personally  with  the  poet  himself. 

:  He  was  born  in  the  sixth  year  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  twelve 
years  after  the  birth  of  Spenser,  three  years  later  than  the 
birth  of  Bacon.  Marlowe  was  of  the  same  age  with  Shak- 
spere  :  Greene  probably  a  few  years  older.  His  father, 
a  glover  and  small  farmer  of  Stratford-oii-Avon,  was  forced 
by  poverty  to  lay  down  his  office  of  alderman,  as  his  son 
reached  boyhood  ;  and  stress  of  poverty  may  have  been  the 
cause  which  drove  William  Shakspere,  who  was  already  mar- 
ried at  eighteen  to  a  wife  older  than  himself,  to  London  and 
the  stage.  His  life  in  the  capital  can  hardly  have  begun 
later  than  in  his  twenty-third  year,  the  memorable  year  which 
followed  Sidney's  death,  which  preceded  the  coming  of  the 
Armada,  and  which  witnessed  the  production  of  Marlowe's 
';  Tamburlaine."  If  we  take  the  language  of  the  Sonnets  as 
a  record  of  his  personal  feeling,  his  new  profession  as  an  actor 
stirred  in  him  only  the  bitterness  of  self-contempt.  He  chides 
with  Fortune,  "that  did  not  better  for  my  life  provide  than 
public  means  that  public  manners  breed  \"  he  writhes  at  the 
thought  that  he  has  '•'  made  himself  a  motley  to  the  view  "  of  the 
gaping  apprentices  in  the  pit  of  Blackfriars.  "  Thence  comes 
it,"  he  adds,  "  that  my  name  receives  a  brand,  and  almost 
thence  my  nature  is  subdued  to  that  it  works  in."  But  the 
application  of  the  words  is  a  more  than  doubtful  one.  In  spite 
of  petty  squabbles  with  some  of  his  dramatic  rivals  at  the 
outset  of  his  career,  the  genial  nature  of  the  newcomer  seems 
to  have  won  him  a  general  love  among  his  fellow  actors.  In 
1592,  while  still  a  mere  fitter  of  old  plays  for  the  stage,  a 
fellow  playwright,  Chettle,  answered  Greene's  attack  on  him 
in  words  of  honest  affection  :  ""  Myself  have  seen  his  demeanor 
no  less  civil,  than  he  excellent  in  the  quality  he  professes  : 
besides,  divers  of  worship  have  reported  his  uprightness  of 
dealing,  which  argues  his  honesty  ;  and  his  facetious  grace  in 
writing,  that  approves  his  art."  His  partner  Bnrbage  spoke 
of. him  af ter. death  .as  a."  worthy, . friend  and  . fellow  ;  "  and 


THE   ELIZABETHAN  VOETS.  547 

Jonaon  handed  down  the  general  tradition  of  his,  time  wheu 
he  described  him  as  "  indeed  honest,  and  of  an  open  and  free 
nature."  His  profession  as  an  actor  was  of  essential  service 
to  him  in  his  poetic  career.  Not  only  did  it  give  him  the 
sense  of  theatrical  necessities  which  makes  his  plays  so 
effective  on  the  boards,  but  it  enabled  him  to  bring  his  pieces 
as  he  wrote  them  to  the  test  of  the  stage.  If  there  is  any 
truth  in  Jonson's  statement  that  Shakspere  never  blotted 
a  line,  there  is  no  justice  in  the  censure  which  it  implies  on 
his  carelessness  or  incorrectness.  The  conditions  of  poetic 
publication  were  in  fact  wholly  different  from  those  of  our 
own  day.  A  drama  remained  for  years  in  manuscript  as  an 
acting  piece,  subject  to  continual  revision  and  amendment ; 
and  every  rehearsal  and  representation  afforded  hints  for 
change  which  we  know  the  young  poet  was  far  from  neglect- 
ing. The  chance  which  has  preserved  an  earlier  edition  of 
his  <•'  Hamlet"  shows  in  what  an  unsparing  way  Shakspere 
could  recast  even  the  finest  products  of  his  genius.  Five 
years  after  the  supposed  date  of  his  arrival  in  London,  he  was 
already  famous  as  a  dramatist.  Greene  speaks  bitterly  of  him, 
under  the  name  of  "  Shakescene,"  as  an  "  upstart  crow 
beautified  with  our  feathers,"  a  sneer  which  points  either 
to  his  celebrity  as  an  actor,  or  to  his  preparation  for  loftier 
flights  by  fitting  pieces  of  his  predecessors  for  the  stage. 
He  was  soon  partner  in  the  theater,  actor,  and  playwright  j 
and  another  nickname,  that  of  "Johannes  Factotum/'  or 
Jack-of-all-Trades,  shows  his  readiness  to  take  all  honest 
work  which  came  to  hand. 

With  the  poem  of  "  Venus  and  Adonis,"  "the  first  heir  of 
my  invention,"  as  Shakspere  calls  it,  the  period  of  independent 
creation  fairly  began.  The  date  of  its  publication  was  a  very 
memorable  one.  The  "Faerie  Queen  "had  appeared  only 
three  years  before,  and  had  placed  Spenser  without  a  rival  at 
the  head  of  English  poetry.  On  the  other  hand,  the  two 
leading  dramatists  of  the  time  passed  at  this  moment  suddenly 
away.  Greene  died  in  poverty  and  self-reproach  in  the  house 
of  a  poor  shoemaker.  "  Doll,"  he  wrote  to  the  wife  he  had 
abandoned,  "  I  charge  thee,  by  the  love  of  our  youth  and 
by  my  soul's  rest,  that  thou  wilt  see  this  man  paid  :  for  if  he 
and  his  wife  had  not  succored  me,  I  had  died  in  the 
streets."  "  Oh,  that  a  year  were  granted  me  to  live/'  cried 


548  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  young  poet  from  his  bed  of  death — "  but  I  must  die,  of 
every  man  abhorred  !  Time,  loosely  spent,  will  not  again 
be  won  !  My  time  is  loosely  spent — and  I  undone  ! "  A 
year  later,  the  death  of  Marlowe  in  a  street  brawl  removed 
the  only  rival  whose  powers  might  have  equaled  Shak- 
spere's  own.  He  was  now  about  thirty ;  and  the  twenty- 
three  years  which  elapsed  between  the  appearance  of  the 
"  Adonis'*  and  his  death  were  filled  with  a  series  of  master- 
pieces. Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  his  genius  than 
its  incessant  activity.  Through  the  five  years  which  followed 
the  publication  of  his  early  poem  he  seems  to  have  produced 
on  an  average  two  dramas  a  year.  When  wo  attempt,  how- 
ever, to  trace  the  growth  and  progress  of  the  poet's  mind  in 
the  order  of  his  plays,  we  are  met,  at  least  in  the  case  of 
many  of  them,  by  an  absence  of  certain  information  as  to  the 
dates  of  their  appearance.  The  facts  on  which  inquiry  has 
to  build  are  extremely  few.  "  Venus  and  Adonis."  with  the 
"  Lucrece,"  must  have  been  written  before  their  publica- 
tion in  1593-4;  the  Sonnets,  though  not  published  till  1609, 
were  known  in  some  form  among  his  private  friends  us  early 
as  1598.  His  earlier  plays  are  defined  by  a  list  given  in  the 
"Wit's  Treasury"  of  Francis  Meres  in  1598,  though  the 
omission  of  a  play  from  a  casual  catalogue  of  this  kind 
would  hardly  warrant  us  in  assuming  its  necessary  non- 
existence  at  the  time.  The  works  ascribed  to  him  at  his 
death  are  fixed,  in  the  same  approximate  fashion,  through 
the  edition  published  by  his  fellow-actors.  Beyond  these 
meager  facts,  and  our  knowledge  of  the  publication  of  a  few 
of  his  dramas  in  his  lifetime,  all  is  uncertain  ;  and  the  con- 
clusions which  have  been  drawn  from  these,  and  from  the 
dramas  themselves,  as  well  as  from  assumed  resemblances 
with,  or  references  to,  other  plays  of  the  period,  can  only  be 
accepted  as  approximations  to  the  truth.  The  bulk  of  his 
lighter  comedies  and  historical  dramas  can  be  assigned  with 
fair  probability  to  the  period  from  about  1593,  when  he  was 
known  as  nothing  more  than  an  adapter,  to  1598,  when  they 
are  mentioned  in  the  list  of  Meres.  They  bear  on  them  in- 
deed the  stamp  of  youth.  In  "Love's  Labor's  Lost"  the 
young  playwright,  fresh  from  his  own  Stratford,  flings  him- 
self into  the  midst  of  the  brilliant  England  which  gainered 
round  Elizabeth,  busying  himself  as  yet  1'or  the  most  part 


THE  ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  649 

with  the  surface  of  it,  with  the  humors  and  quixotisms.  the 
wit  and  the  whim,  the  unreality,  the  fantastic  extravagance, 
which  veiled  its  inner  nobleness.  Country  lad  as  he  is,  he 
can  exchange  quip  and  repartee  with  the  best ;  he  quizzes 
tl;e  verbal  wit  and  high-flown  extravagance  of  thought  and 
phrase  which  Euphues  had  made  fashionable  in  the  court 
world  of  the  time.  He  shares  the  delight  in  existence  which 
was  so  marked  a  feature  of  the  age  ;  he  enjoys  the  mis- 
takes, the  contrasts,  the  adventures,  of  the  men  about 
him  ;  his  fun  breaks  almost  riotously  out  in  the  practical 
jokes  of  the  "  Taming  of  the  Shrew"  and  the  endless  blunder- 
ings  of  the  "Comedy  of  Errors."  His  work  is  as  yet  marked 
by  little  poetic  elevation,  or  by  passion  ;  but  the  easv  grace 
of  the  dialogue,  the  dexterous  management  of  a  complicated 
story,  the  genial  gaiety  of  his  tone,  and  the  music  of  his 
verse,  promised  a  master  of  social  comedy  as  soon  as  Shak- 
spere  turned  from  the  superficial  aspects  of  the  world  about 
him  to  find  a  new  delight  in  the  character  and  actions  of 
men.  In  the  "  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona/'  his  painting  of 
manners  was  suffused  by  a  tenderness  and  ideal  beauty,  which 
formed  an  effective  protest  against  the  hard  though  vigorous 
character-painting  which  the  first  success  of  Ben  Jonson  in 
"Every  Man  in  his  Humor"  brought  at  the  time  into 
fashion.  But  quick  on  these  lighter  comedies  followed  two, 
in  which  his  genius  started  fully  into  life.  His  poetic  pow^r, 
held  in  reserve  till  now,  showed  itself  with  a  splendid  pro- 
fusion in  the  brilliant  fancies  of  the  "Midsummer  Night's 
Dream  ;  "  and  passion  swept  like  a  tide  of  resistless  delight 
through  "Romeo  and  Juliet."  Side  by  side  however  with 
these  passionate  dreams,  these  delicate  imaginings  and  pi- 
quant sketches  of  manners,  had  been  appearing  during  this 
short  interval  of  intense  activity  his  historical  dramas.  No 
plays  seem  to  have  been  more  popular,  from  the  earliest 
hours  of  the  new  stage,  than  dramatic  representations  of  our 
history.  Marlowe  had  shown  in  his  "  Edward  the  Second  " 
what  tragic  grandeur  could  be  reached  in  this  favorite  field  ; 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  Shakspere  had  been  led  naturally  to- 
wards it  by  his  earlier  occupation  as  an  adapter  of  stock 
piecps  like  "  Henry  the  Sixth"  for  the  new  requiremeir 
the  stage.  He  still  to  some  extent  followed  in  plan  the  older 
plays  on  the  subjects  he  selected,  but  in  his  treatment  of 


550  11  ISTORY  OP   THE  BNGL-ISfl   PEOPLE. 


their  themes  he  shook  boldly  off  the  yoke  of  the  past.  A 
larger  and  deeper  conception  of  human  character  than  any 
of  the  old  dramatists  had  reached  displayed  itself  in  Richard 
the  Third,  in  Falstaff  ,  or  in  Hotspur  ;  while  in  Constance 
and  Richard  the  Second  the  pathos  of  human  suffering  was 
painted  as  even  Marlowe  had  never  dared  to  paint  it.  No 
dramas  have  done  so  much  for  Shakspere's  enduring  popu- 
larity with  his  countrymen  as  these  historical  plays.  No- 
where is  the  spirit  of  our  history  so  nobly  rendered.  If  the 
poet's  work  echoes  sometimes  our  national  prejudice  and  un- 
fairness of  temper,  it  is  instinct  throughout  with  English 
humor,  with  our  English  love  of  hard  fighting,  our  English 
faith  in  goodness  and  in  the  doom  that  waits  upon  trium- 
phant evil,  our  English  pity  for  the  fallen. 

Whether  as  a  tragedian  or  as  a  writer  of  social  comedy,  Shak- 
spere  had  now  passed  far  beyond  his  fellows.  "  The  Muses," 
said  Meres,  "would  speak  with  Shakspere's  fine  filed  phrase, 
if  they  would  speak  English."  His  personal  popularity  was 
at  its  height.  His  pleasant  temper,  and  the  vivacity  of  his 
wit,  had  drawn  him  early  into  contact  with  the  young  Earl 
of  Southampton,  to  whom  his  "Adonis"  and"Lucrece" 
are  dedicated  ;  and  the  different  tone  of  the  two  dedications 
shows  how  rapidly  acquaintance  ripened  into  an  ardent  friend- 
ship. Shakspere's  wealth  and  influence  too  were  growing 
fast.  He  had  property  both  in  Stratford  and  London,  and 
his  fellow-townsmen  made  him  their  suitor  to  Lord  Burleigh 
for  favors  to  be  bestowed  on  Stratford.  He  was  rich  enough 
to  aid  his  father,  and  to  buy  the  house  at  Stratford  which 
afterwards  became  his  home.  The  tradition  that  Eliza- 
beth was  so  pleased  with  Falstaff  in  "Henry  the  Fourth" 
that  she  ordered  the  poet  to  show  her  Falstaff  in  love  —  an 
order  which  produced  the  "Merry  Wives  of  Windsor"  — 
whether  true  or  false,  proves  his  repute  as  a  playwright.  As 
the  group  of  earlier  poets  passed  away,  they  found  successors 
iu  Marston,  Dekker,  Middleton,  Heywood,  and  Chapman, 
and  above  all  in  Ben  Jonson.  But  none  of  these  could  dis- 
pute the  supremacy  of  Shakspere.  The  verdict  of  Meres, 
that  "  Shakspere  among  the  English  is  the  most  excellent 
in  both  kinds  for  the  stage,"  represented  the  general  feeling 
of  his  contemporaries.  He  was  at  last  fully  master  of  the 
resources  of  his  art.  The  "  Merchant  of  Venice  "  marks  the 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  551 

perfection  of  his  development  as  a  dramatist  iii  the  com- 
pleteness of  its  stage  effect,  the  ingenuity  of  its  incidents, 
the  ease  of  its  movement,  the  poetic  beauty  of  its  higher 
passages,  the  reserve  and  self-control  with  which  its  poetry 
is  used,  the  conception  and  unfolding  of  character,  and  above 
all  the  mastery  with  which  character  and  event  are  grouped 
round  the  figure  of  Shy  lock.  But  the  poet's  temper  is  still 
young  ;  the  "  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor"  is  a  burst  of  gay 
laughter  ;  and  laughter  more  tempered,  yet  full  of  a  sweeter 
fascination,  rings  round  us  in  "As  You  Like  It."  But  in 
the  melancholy  and  meditative  Jacques  of  the  last  drama  we 
feel  the  touch  of  a  new  and  greater  mood.  Youth,  so  full 
and  buoyant  in  the  poet  till  now,  seems  to  have  passed  almost 
suddenly  away.  Though  Shakspere  had  hardly  reached 
forty,  in  one  of  his  Sonnets  which  cannot  have  been  written 
at  a  much  later  time  than  this,  there  are  indications  that  he 
already  felt  the  advance  of  premature  age.  The  outer  world 
suddenly  darkened  around  him.  The  brilliant  circle  of 
young  nobles  whose  friendship  he  had  shared  was  broken  up 
by  the  political  storm  which  burst  in  a  mad  struggle  of  the 
Earl  of  Essex  for  power.  Essex  himself  fell  on  the  scaffold  ; 
his  friend  and  Shakspere's  idol,  Southampton,  passed  a 
prisoner  into  the  Tower  ;  Herbert,  Lord  Pembroke,  a  younger 
patron  of  the  poet,  was  banished  from  Court.  While  friends 
were  thus  falling  and  hopes  fading  without,  Shakspere's  own 
mind  seems  to  have  been  going  through  a  phase  of  bitter 
suffering  and  unrest.  In  spite  of  the  ingenuity  of  commen- 
tators, it  is  difficult  and  even  impossible  to  derive  any  knowl- 
edge of  his  inner  history  from  the  Sonnets ;  "  the  strange 
imagery  of  passion  which  passes  over  the  magic  mirror,"  it 
has  been  finely  said,  "  has  no  tangible  evidence  before  or 
behind  it."  But  its  mere  passing  is  itself  an  evidence  of  the 
restlessness  and  agony  within.  The  change  in  the  character 
of  his  dramas  gives  a  surer  indication  of  his  change  of  mood. 
The  joyousness  which  breathes  through  his  early  work  dis- 
appears in  comedies  such  as  "Troilus"  and  Measure  for 
Measure."  Failure  seems  everywhere.  In  "  Julius  Caesar  " 
the  virtue  of  Brutus  is  foiled  by  its  ignorance  of  and  isolation 
from  mankind  ;  in  Hamlet  even  penetrating  intellect  proves 
helpless  for  want  of  the  capacity  of  action ;  the  poison  of 
lago  taints  the  love  of  Desdemona  and  the  grandeur  of 


552  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Othello  ;  Lear's  mighty  passion  battles  helplessly  against 
the  wind  and  the  rain  ;  a  woman's  weakness  of  frame  dashes 
the  cup  of  her  triumph  from  the  hand  of  Lady  Macbeth; 
lust  and  self-indulgence  blast  the  heroism  of  Antony  ;  pride 
ruins  the  nobleness  of  Coriolanus.  But  the  very  struggle 
and  self-introspection  that  these  dramas  betray  were  to  give 
a  depth  and  grandeur  to  Shakspere's  work  such  as  it  had 
never  known  before.  The  age  was  one  in  which  man's  temper 
and  powers  took  a  new  range  and  energy.  The  daring  of 
the  adventurer,  the  philosophy  of  the  scholar,  the  passion  of 
the  lover,  the  fanaticism  of  the  saint,  towered  into  almost 
superhuman  grandeur.  Man  became  conscious  of  the  im- 
mense resources  that  lay  within  him,  conscious  of  boundless 
powers  that  seemed  to  mock  the  narrow  world  in  which  they 
moved.  It  is  this  grandeur  of  humanity  that  spreads  before 
us  as  the  poet  pictures  the  wide  speculation  of  Hamlet,  the 
awful  convulsion  of  a  great  nature  in  Othello,  the  terrible 
storm  in  the  soul  of  Lear  which  blends  with  the  very  storm 
of  the  heavens  themselves,  the  fearful  ambition  that  nerved 
a  woman's  hand  to  dabble  itself  with  the  blood  of  a  murdered 
king,  the  reckless  lust  that  "  flung  away  a  world  for  love." 
Amid  the  terror  and  awe  of  these  great  dramas  we  learn 
something  of  the  vast  forces  of  the  age  from  which  they 
sprang.  The  passion  of  Mary  Stuart,  the  ruthlessness  of 
Alva,  the  daring  of  Drake,  the  chivalry  of  Sidney,  the  range 
of  thought  and  action  in  Ralegh  or  Elizabeth,  come  better 
home  to  us  as  we  follow  the  mighty  series  of  tragedies  which 
began  in  "  Hamlet"  and  ended  in  "  Coriolanus." 

Shakspere's  last  dramas,  the  three  exquisite  works  in  which 
he  shows  a  soul  at  rest  with  itself  and  with  the  world, 
"Cymbeline,"  "The  Tempest," .  "Winter's  Tale,"  were 
written  in  the  midst  of  ease  and  competence,  in  a  house  at 
Stratford,  to  which  he  withdrew  a  few  years  after  the  death 
of  Elizabeth.  In  them  we  lose  all  relation  with  the  world 
or  the  time  and  pass  into  a  region  of  pure  poetry.  It  i.s  in 
this  peaceful  and  gracious  close  that  the  life  of  Shakspere 
contrasts  with  that  of  his  greatest  contemporaries.  Himself 
Elizabethan  to  the  core,  he  stood  at  the  meeting-point  of  two 
great  epochs  of  our  history.  The  age  of  the  Renascence  was 
passing  into  the  age  of  Puritanism.  A  sterner  Protestantism, 
was  invigorating  and  ennobling  life  by  its  morality,  its  serious- 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  553 

ness,  its  intense  conviction  of  God.  But  it  was  at  the  same 
time  lumlening  and  narrowing  it.  The  Bible  was  supersed- 
ing Plutarch.  The  "  obstiimte  questionings "  which  haunted 
the  finer  souls  of  the  Renascence  were  being  stereotyped  into 
the  theological  formulas  of  the  Puritan.  The  sense  of  a 
divine  omnipotence  was  annihilating  man.  The  daring 
which  turned  England  into  a  people  of  "adventurers,"  the 
sense  of  inexhaustible  resources,  the  buoyant  freshness  of 
youth,  the  intoxicating  sense  of  beauty  and  joy,  which  created 
Sidney  and  Marlowe  and  Drake,  were  passing  away  before 
the  consciousness  of  evil  and  the  craving  to  order  man's  life 
aright  before  God.  A  new  political  world,  healthier,  more 
really  national,  but  less  picturesque,  less  wrapt  in  the  mystery 
and  splendor  which  poets  love,  was  rising  with  the  new  moral 
world.  Rifts  which  were  still  little  were  widening  hour  by 
hour,  and  threatening  ruin  to  the  great  fabric  of  Church  and 
State,  which  the  Tudors  had  built  up,  and  to  which  the  men 
of  the  Renascence  clung  passionately.  From  this  new  world 
of  thought  and  feeling  Shakspere  stood  utterly  aloof.  Of 
the  popular  tendencies  of  Puritanism — and  great  as  were  ita 
faults,  Puritanism  may  fairly  claim  to  be  the  first  political 
system  which  recognized  the  grandeur  of  the  people  as  a 
whole — Shakspere  knew  nothing.  His  roll  of  dramas  is  the 
epic  of  civil  war.  The  Wars  of  the  Roses  fill  his  mind,  as 
they  filled  the  mind  of  his  contemporaries.  It  is  not  till  we 
follow  him  through  the  series  of  plays  from  "Richard  the 
Second"  to  "  Henry  the  Eighth  "  that  we  realize  how  pro- 
foundly the  memory  of  the  struggle  between  York  and  Lan- 
caster had  molded  the  temper  of  the  people,  how  deep  a 
dread  of  civil  war,  of  baronial  turbulence,  of  disputes  over 
the  succession  it  had  left  behind  it.  From  such  a  risk  the 
Crown  seemed  the  one  security.  With  Shakspere  as  with  his 
contemporaries  the  Crown  is  still  the  center  and  safeguard  of 
the  national  life.  His  ideal  England  is  an  England  grouped 
round  a  king  such  as  his  own  Henry  V.,  a  born  ruler  of  men, 
with  a  loyal  people  about  him,  and  his  enemies  at  his  feet. 
Socially  too  the  poet  reflects  the  aristocratic  view  of  life 
which  was  shared  by  all  the  nobler  spirits  of  the  Elizabethan 
time.  Coriolanns  is  the  embodiment  of  a  great  noble  ;  and 
the  taunts  which  Shakspere  hurls  in  play  after  play  at  the 
rabble  only  echo  the  general  temper  of  the  Renascence.  But 


HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

he  shows  no  sympathy  with  the  struggle  of  feudalism  against 
the  Crown.  He  had  grown  up  under  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  ; 
he  had  known  no  ruler  save  one  who  had  cast  a  spell  over 
the  hearts  of  Englishmen.  The  fear  of  misrule  was  dim  and 
distant ;  his  thoughts  were  absorbed,  as  those  of  the  country 
were  absorbed,  in  the  struggle  for  national  existence,  and  the 
heat  of  such  a  struggle  left  no  time  for  the  thoughts  of  civil 
liberty.  Nor  were  the  spiritual  sympathies  of  the  poet  those 
of  the  coming  time.  Turn  as  others  might  to  the  specula- 
tions of  theology,  man  and  man's  nature  remained  with  him, 
an  inexhaustible  subject  of  interest.  Caliban  was  among  his 
.  latest  creations.  It  is  impossible  to  discover  whether  his 
faith,  if  faith  there  were,  was  Catholic  or  Protestant.  It  is 
hard,  indeed,  to  say  whether  he  had  any  religious  belief  or 
no,  The  religious  phrases  which  are  thinly  scattered  over 
his  works  are  little  more  than  expressions  of  a  distant  and 
imaginative  reverence.  But  on  the  deeper  grounds  of  re- 
,  ligious  faith  his  silence  is  significant.  He  is  silent,  and  the 
.doubt  of  Hamlet  deepens  his  silence,  about  the  after- world. 
i**  To  die,"  it  may  be,  was  to  him  as  to  Claudio,  "  to  go  we 
know  not  whither."  Often  as  his  "questionings"  turn  to 
the  riddle  of  life  and  death,  he  leaves  it  a  riddle  to  the  last, 
without  heeding  the  common  theological  solutions  around 
him.  "  We  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of,  and  our 
little  life  is  rounded  with  a  sleep." 

The  contrast  between  the  spirit  of  the  Elizabethan  drama 
and  the  new  temper  of  the  nation  became  yet  stronger  when 
The  M»r    ^ne  death  of  Shakspere  left  the  sovereignty  of  the 
Dramatists.  English  stage  to  Ben  Jonson.     Jonson  retained 
Jonson.     ^  aimost  to  the  moment  when  the  drama  itself 
perished  in  the  storm  of  the  Civil  War.     Webster  and  Ford, 
indeed,    surpassed  him   in  tragic  grandeur,  Massinger  in 
facility  and  grace,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  in  poetry  and 
inventiveness ;  but  in  the  breadth  of  his  dramatic  quality, 
his  range  over  every  kind  of  poetic  excellence,  Jouson  was 
excelled  by  Shakspere  alone.     His  life  retained  to  the  last 
i  the  riotous,  defiant  color  of  the  earlier  dramatic  world,  in 
which,  he  had  made  his  way  to  fame.     The  stepson  of  a  brick- 
flayer,  he  enlisted  as  a  volunteer  in  the  wars  of  the  Low  Coun- 
tries, killed  his  man  in  .single  combat  in  sight  of  both  armies, 
»nd  returned  at  nineteen  to  London  to  throw  himself  on 


THE  ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  555 

stage  for  bread.  At  forty-five  he  was  still  so  vigorous  that 
he  made  his  way  to  Scotland  on  foot.  Even  in  old  age  his 
"  mountain  belly/'  his  scarred  face,  and  massive  frame  became 
famous  among  the  men  of  a  younger  time,  as  they  gathered 
at  the  "  Mermaid  "  to  listen  to  his  wit,  his  poetry,  his  out- 
bursts of  spleen  and  generosity,  of  delicate  fancy,  of  pedantry, 
of  riotous  excess.  His  entry  on  the  stage  was  marked  by  a 
proud  resolve  to  reform  it.  Already  a  fine  scholar  in  early 
manhood,  and  disdainful  of  writers  who,  like  Shakspere, 
"  had  small  Latin  and  less  Greek,"  Jonson  aimed  at  a  return 
to  classic  severity,  to  a  severer  criticism  and  taste.  He 
blamed  the  extravagance  which  marked  the  poetry  around 
him,  he  studied  his  plots,  he  gave  symmetry  and  regularity 
to  his  sentences  and  conciseness  to  his  phrase.  But  creative- 
ness  disappears  :  in  his  social  comedies  we$re  amongst  quali- 
ties and  types  rather  than  men,  amongst  abstractions  and  not 
characters.  His  comedy  is  no  genial  reflection  of  life  as  it 
is,  but  a  moral,  satirical  effort  to  reform  manners.  It  is  only 
his  wonderful  grace  and  real  poetic  feeling  that  lightens  all 
this  pedantry.  He  shares  the  vigor  and  buoyancy  of  life 
which  distinguished  the  school  from  which  he  sprang.  His 
stage  is  thronged  with  figures.  In  spite  of  his  talk  about 
correctness,  his  own  extravagance  is  only  saved  from  becom- 
ing ridiculous  by  his  amazing  force.  If  he  could  not  create 
characters,  his  wealth  of  striking  details  gave  life  to  the  types 
which  he  substituted  for  them.  His  poetry,  too,  is  of  the 
highest  order ;  his  lyrics  of  the  purest,  lightest  fancy  :  his 
maeks  rich  with  gorgeous  pictures ;  his  pastoral,  the  "  Sud 
Shepherd,"  fragment  as  it  is,  breathes  a  delicate  tenderness. 
But,  in  spite  of  the  beauty  and  strength  which  lingered 
the  life  of  our  drama  was  fast  ebbing  away.  The  interest  of 
the  people  was  in  reality  being  drawn  to  newer  and  graver 
themes,  as  the  struggle  of  the  Great  Rebellion  threw  its 
shadow  before  it,  and  the  efforts  of  the  playwrights  to  arrest 
this  tendency  of  the  time  by  fresh  excitement  only  brought 
about  the  ruin  of  the  stage.  The  grossness  of  the  later 
comedy  is  iicredible.  Almost  as  incredible  is  the  taste  of 
the  later  tragedians  for  horrors  of  incest  and  blood.  The 
hatred  of  the  Puritans  to  the  stage  was  not  a  mere  longing 
to  avenge  the  insults  which  it  had  leveled  at  Puritanism  ;  it 
was  in  the  main  the  honest  hatred  of  God-fearing  men  against 


556  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  foulest  depravity  presented  in  a  poetic  and  attractive 
form. 

If  the  imaginative  resources  of  the  new  England  were  seen 
in  the  creators  of  Hamlet  and  the  Faerie  Queen,  its  purely 

intellectual  capacity,  its  vast  command  over  the 
BacDn.      stores  of  human  knowledge,  the  amazing  sense 

of  its  own  powers  with  which  it  dealt  with  them, 
were  seen  in  the  work  of  Francis  Bacon.  Bacon  was  born  at 
the  opening  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  three  years  before  the  birth 
of  Sliakspere.  He  was  the  younger  son  of  a  Lord  Keeper,  as 
well  as  the  nephew  of  Lord  Burleigh,  and  even  in  boyhood 
his  quickness  and  sagacity  won  the  favor  of  the  queen. 
Elizabeth  "delighted  much  to  confer  with  him,  and  to  prove 
him  with  questions  :  unto  which  he  delivered  himself  with 
that  gravity  and  maturity  above  his  years  that  her  Majesty 
would  often  term  fiim  'the  young  Lord  Keeper/'  Even  as 
a  boy  at  college  he  had  expressed  his -dislike  of  the  Aristo- 
telian philosophy,  as  "a  philosophy  only  strong  for  disputa- 
tions and  contentions,  but  barren  of  the  production  of  works 
for  the  benefit  of  the  life  of  man."  As  a  law-student  of 
twenty-one  he  sketched  in  a  tract  on  the  "  Greatest  Birth  of 
Time"  the  system  of  inductive  inquiry  he  was  already  pre- 
pared to  substitute  for  it.  The  speculations  of  the  young 
thinker  were  interrupted  by  hopes  of  Court  success  ;  but 
these  were  soon  dashed  to  the  ground.  He  was  left  poor  by 
his  father's  death  ;  the  ill-will  of  the  Cecils  barred  his  ad- 
vancement with  the  queen:  and  a  few  years  before  Shak- 
spere's  arrival  in  London  ha  entered  as  a  barrister  at  Gray's 
Inn.  He  soon  became  one  of  the  most  successful  lawyers  of 
the  time.  At  twenty-three  he  was  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  his  judgment  and  eloquence  at  once  brought 
him  to  the  front.  "  The  fear  of  every  man  that  heard  him 
was  iest  he  should  make  an  end,"  Ben  Jonsou  tells  us.  The 
steady  growth  of  his  reputation  was  quickened  by  the  ap- 
pearance of  his  "  Essays,"  a  work  remarkable  not  merely  for 
the  condensation  of  its  thought  and  its  felicity  and  exactness 
of  expression,  but  for  the  power  with  which  it  applied  to 
human  life  that  experimental  analysis  which  Bacon  was  at  a 
later  time  to  make  the  key  of  Science.  His  fame  at  once 
became  great  at  home  and  abroad,  but  with  this  nobler  fame 
Bacon  could  not  content  himself.  He  was  conscious  of  great 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  557 

powers,  as  well  as  great  aims  for  the  public  good  ;  and  it  was 
a  time  when  such  aims  could  hardly  be  realized  save  through 
the  means  of  the  Crown.  But  political  employment  seemed 
further  off  than  ever.  At  the  outset  of  his  career  in  Parlia- 
ment he  had  irritated  Elizabeth  by  a  firm  opposition  to  her 
demand  of  a  subsidy ;  and  though  the  offense  was  atoned 
for  by  profuse  apologies,  and  by  the  cessation  of  all  further 
resistance  to  the  policy  of  the  court,  the  law  offices  of  the 
Crown  were  more  than  once  refused  to  him,  and  it  was  only 
after  the  publication  of  his  "  Essays"  that  he  could  obtain 
some  slight  promotion  as  a  Queen's  Counsel.  The  moral 
weakness  which  more  and  more  disclosed  itself  is  the  best 
justification  of  the  queen  in  her  reluctance — a  reluctance  so 
strangely  in  contrast  with  her  ordinary  course — to  bring  the 
wisest  head  in  her  realm  to  her  Council-board.  The  men 
whom  Elizabeth  employed  were  for  the  most  part  men 
whose  intellect  was  directed  by  a  strong  sense  of  public  duty. 
Their  reverence  for  the  queen,  strangely  exaggerated  as  it 
may  seem  to  us,  was  guided  and  controlled  by  an  ardent 
patriotism  and  an  earnest  sense  of  religion  ;  and  with  all 
their  regard  for  the  royal  prerogative,  they  never  lost  their 
regard  for  the  law.  The  grandeur  and  originality  of  Bacon's 
intellect  parted  him  from  men  like  these  quite  as  much  as 
the  bluntness  of  his  moral  perceptions.  In  politics,  as  in 
science,  he  had  little  reverence  for  the  past.  Law,  consti- 
tutional privileges,  or  religion,  were  to  him  simply  means  of 
bringing  about  certain  ends  of  good  government  ;  and  if 
these  ends  rould  be  brought  about  in  shorter  fashion  he  saw 
only  pedantry  in  insisting  on  more  cumbrous  means.  Ho 
had  great  social  and  political  ideas  to  realize,  the  reform  and 
codification  of  the  law,  the  civilization  of  Ireland,  the  puri- 
fication of  the  Church,  the  union— at  a  later  time—of  Scot- 
land and  England,  educational  projects,  projects  of  material 
improvement,  and  the  like  ;  and  the  direct  and  shortest  way 
of  realizing  these  ends  was  in  Bacon's  eyes  the  use  of  the 
power  of  the  Crown.  But  whatever  charm  such  a  conception 
of  the  royal  power  might  have  for  her  successor,  it  had  little 
charm  for  Elizabeth  ;  and  to  the  end  of  her  reign  Bacon  was 
foiled  in  his  efforts  to  rise  in  her  service. 

"  For  my  name  and   memory."  he  said  at  the  close  of  his 
life,  "  I  leave  it  to  men's  charitable  speeches,  and  to  foreign 


558  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

nations,  and  the  next  age."  Amid  political  activity  and  court 
intrigue  he  still  found  room  for  the  philosophical  specula- 
tion which  had  begun  with  his  earliest  years. 
Organum™  ^  f°rty-four,  after  the  final  disappointment 
of  his  political  hopes  from  Elizabeth,  the  publi- 
cation of  the  "  Advancement  of  Learning  v  marked  the  first 
decisive  appearance  of  the  new  philosophy  which  he  had  been 
silently  framing.  The  close  of  this  work  was,  in  his  own 
words,  "  a  general  and  faithful  perambulation  of  learning, 
with  an  inquiry  what  parts  thereof  lie  fresh  and  waste,  and 
not  improved  and  converted  by  the  industry  of  man  ;  to  the 
end  that  such  a  plot,  made  and  recorded  to  memory,  may 
both  minister  light  to  any  public  designation  and  also  serve 
to  excite  voluntary  endeavors."  It  was  only  by  such  a  survey 
he  held,  that  men  could  be  turned  from  useless  studies,  or 
ineffectual  means  of  pursuing  more  useful  ones,  and  directed 
to  the  true  end  of  knowledge  as  "  a  rich  storehouse  for  the 
glory  of  the  Creator  and  the  relief  of  man's  estate."  The 
work  was  in  fact  the  preface  to  a  series  of  treatises  which 
were  intended  to  be  built  up  into  an  "  Instauratio  Magna," 
which  its  author  was  never  destined  to  complete,  and  of 
which  the  parts  that  we  possess  were  published  in  the  fol- 
lowing reign.  The  "  Cogitata  et  Visa"  was  a  first  sketch  of 
the  "Novum  Organum,"  which  in  its  complete  form  was 
presented  to  James  in  1621.  A  year  later  Bacon  produced 
his  "'Natural  and  Experimental  History."  This,  with  the 
"Novum  Organum"  and  the  "Advancement  of  Learning," 
was  all  of  his  projected  "  Instauratio  Magna "  which  he 
actually  finished  ;  and  even  of  this  portion  we  have  only  part 
of  the  last  two  divisions.  The  "  Ladder  of  the  Under- 
standing," which  was  to  have  followed  these  and  lead  up 
from  experience  to  science,  the  "  Anticipations,"  or  pro- 
visional hypotheses  for  the  inquiries  of  the  new  philosophy, 
and  the  closing  account  of  "  Science  in  Practice,"  were  left 
for  posterity  to  bring  to  completion.  "  We  may,  as  we 
trust,"  said  Bacon,  "  make  no  despicable  beginnings.  The 
destinies  of  the  human  race  must  complete  it,  in  such  a 
manner  perhaps  as  men  looking  only  at  the  present  world 
would  not  readily  conceive.  For  upon  this  will  depend,  not 
only  a  speculative  good,  but  all  the  fortunes  of  mankind,  and 
all  their  power."  When  we  turn  from  words  like  these  to 


TKB  ELIZABETHAN   POETS.  />/>9 

the  actual  work  which  Bacon  did,  it  is  hard  not  to  feel  a 
certain  disappointment.  He  did  not  thoroughly  understand 
the  older  philosophy  which  he  attacked.  His  revolt  from 
the  waste  of  human  intelligence,  which  he  conceived  to  be 
owing  to  tho  adoption  of  a  false  method  of  investigation, 
blinded  him  to  the  real  value  of  deduction  as  an  instrument 
of  discovery  ;.  and  he  was  encouraged  in  his  contempt  for  it 
as  much  by  his  own  ignorance  of  mathematics  as  by  the  non- 
existence  in  his  day  of  the  great  deductive  sciences  of  physics 
and  astronomy.  Nor  had  he  a  more  accurate  prevision  of 
the  method  of  modern  science.  The  inductive  process  to 
which  he  exclusively  directed  men's  attention  bore  no  fruit 
in  Bacon's  hands.  The  "  art  of  investigating  nature "  on 
which  he  prided  himself  has  proved  useless  for  scientific 
purposes,  and  would  be  rejected  by  modern  investigators. 
Where  he  was  on  a  more  correct  track  he  can  hardly  be 
regarded  as  original.  "It  may  be  doubted,"  says  Dugald 
Stewart,  "  whether  any  one  important  rale  with  regard  to  the 
true  method  of  investigation  be  contained  in  his  works  of 
which  no  hint  can  be  traced  in  those  of  his  predecessors." 
Not  only  indeed  did  Bacon  fail  to  anticipate  the  methods  of 
modern  science,  lut  he  even  rejected  the  great  scientific 
discoveries  of  his  own  day.  He  set  aside  with  the  same  scorn 
the  astronomical  theory  of  Copernicus  and  the  magnetic 
investigations  of  Gilbert.  The  contempt  seems  to  have  been 
fully  returned  by  the  scientific  workers  of  his  day.  "The 
Lord  Chancellor  wrote  on  science,"  said  Harvey,  the  dis- 
coverer of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  "like  a  Lord  Chan- 
cellor." 

In  spite  however  of  his  inadequate  appreciation  either  of 
the  old  philosophy  or  the  new,  the  almost  unanimous  voice  of 
later  ages  has  attributed,  and  justly  attributed,  to  the 
"  Novum  Organum  "  a  decisive  influence  on  the  development 
of  modern  science.  If  he  failed  in  revealing  the  method  of 
experimental  research.  Bacon  was  the  first  to  proclaim  the 
existence  of  a  Philosophy  of  Science,  to  insist  on  the  unity  of 
knowledge  and  inquiry  throughout  the  physical  world,  to  give 
dignity  by  the  large  and  noble  temper  in  which  he  treated 
them  to  the  petty  details  of  experiment  in  which  science 
had  to  begin,  to  clear  a  way  for  it  by  setting  scornfully  aside 
the  traditions  of  the  past,  to  claim  for  it  its  true  rank  and 


660  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

value,  and  to  point  to  the  enormous  results  which  its  culture 
would  bring  iii  increasing  the  power  and  happiness  of 
mankind.  In  one  respect  his  attitude  was  in  the  highest 
degree  significant.  The  age  in  which  he  lived  was  one  in 
which  theology  was  absorbing  the  intellectual  energy  of  the 
world.  He  was  the  servant,  too,  of  a  king  with  whom  theo- 
logical studies  superseded  all  others.  But  if  he -bowed  in  all 
else  to  James,  Bacon  would  riot,  like  Casaubon,  bow  in  this. 
He  would  not  even,  like  Descartes,  attempt  to  transform 
theology  by  turning  reason  into  a  mode  of  theological 
demonstration.  He  stood  absolutely  aloof  from  it.  Though 
as  a  politician  he  did  not  shrink  from  dealing  with  such  sub- 
jects as  Church  Reform,  he  dealt  with  them  simply  as  matters 
of  civil  polity.  But  from  his  exhaustive  enumeration  of  the 
branches  of  human  knowledge  he  excluded  theology,  and 
theology  alone.  His  method  was  of  itself  inapplicable  to  a 
subject,  where  the  premises  were  assumed  to  be  certain,  and 
the  results  known.  His  aim  was  to  seek  for  unknown  results 
by  simple  experiment.  It  was  against  received  authority  and 
accepted  tradition  in  matters  of  inquiry  that  his  whole  system 
protested  ;  what  he  urged  was  the  need  of  making  belief  rest 
strictly  on  proof,  and  proof  rest  on  the  conclusions  drawn 
from  evidence  by  reason.  But  in  theology — all  theologians 
asserted — reason  played  but  a  subordinate  part.  "  If  I 
proceed  to  treat  of  it/'  said  Bacon,  "  I  shall  step  out  of  the 
bark  of  human  reason,  and  enter  into  the  ship  of  the  Church. 
Neither  will  the  stars  of  philosophy,  which  have  hitherto  so 
nobly  shone  on  us,  any  longer  give  ns  their  light."  The 
certainty  indeed  of  conclusions  on  such  subjects  was  out  of 
harmony  with  the  grandest  feature  of  Bacon's  work,  his 
noble  confession  of  the  liability  of  every  inquirer  to  error.  It 
was  his  especial  task  to  warn  men  against  the  "vain  shows" 
of  knowledge  which  had  so  long  hindered  any  real  advance 
in  it,  the  "idols"  of  the  Tribe,  the  Den,  the  Forum,  and 
the  Theater,  the  errors  which  spring  from  the  systematizing 
spirit  which  pervades  all  masses  of  men,  or  from  individual 
idiosyncrasies,  or  from  the  strange  power  of  words  and  phrases 
over  the  mind,  or  from  the  traditions  of  the  past.  Nor  were 
the  claims  of  theology  easily  to  be  reconciled  with  the  position 
which  he  was  resolute  to  assign  to  natural  science.  "  Through 
all  those  agas,"  Bacon  says,  "wherein  men  of  genius  or 


THE  CONQUEST   OF    IRELAND.      1588   TO   1610.      561 

learning  principally  or  even  moderately  flourished,  the  small- 
est part  of  human  industry  has  been  spent  on  natural  philos- 
ophy, though  this  ought  to  be  esteemed  as  the  great  mother 
of  the  sciences  :  for  all  the  rest,  if  torn  from  this  root,  may 
perhaps  be  polished  and  formed  for  use,  but  can  receive 
little  increase."  It  was  by  the  adoption  of  the  method  of 
inductive  inquiry  which  physical  science  was  to  make  its 
own,  and  by  basing  inquiry  on  grounds  which  physical  science 
could  supply,  that  the  moral  sciences,  ethics 'and  politics 
could  alone  make  any  real  advance.  "  Let  none  expect  any 
great  promotion  of  the  sciences,  especially  in  their  effective 
part,  unless  natural  philosophy  be  drawn  out  to  particular 
sciences  ;  and,  again,  unless  these  particular  sciences  be 
brought  back  again  to  natural  philosophy.  From  this  defect 
it  is  that  astronomy,  optics,  music,  many  meclflmical  arts, 
and  (what  seems  stranger)  even  moral  and  civil  philosophy 
and  logic  rise  but  little  above  the  foundations,  and  only  skim 
over  the  varieties  and  surfaces  of  things."  It  was  this  lofty 
conception  of  the  position  and  destiny  of  natural  science 
which  Bacon  was  the  first  to  impress  upon  mankind  at  large. 
The  age  was  one  in  which  knowledge  was  passing  to  fields  of 
inquiry  which  had  till  then  been  unknown,  in  which  Kepler 
and  Galileo  were  creating  modern  astronomy,  in  which  Des- 
cartes was  revealing  the  laws  of  motion,  and  Harvey  the 
circulation,  of  the  blood.  But  to  the  mass  of  men  this  great 
change  was  all  but  imperceptible  ;  and  it  was  the  energy, 
the  profound  conviction,  the  eloquence  of  Bacon  which  first 
called  the  attention  of  mankind  as  a  whole  to  the  power  and 
importance  of  physical  research.  It  was  he  who  by  his  lofty 
faith  in  the  results  and  victories  of  the  new  philosophy  nerved 
its  followers  to  a  zeal  and  confidence  equal  to  his  own.  It 
was  he  who  above  all  gave  dignity  to  the  slow  and  patient 
processes  of  investigation,  of  experiment,  of  comparison,  to 
the  sacrificing  of  hypothesis  to  fact,  to  the  single  aim  after 
truth,  which  was  to  be  the  law  of  modern  science. 

Section  VIII.— The  Conquest  of  Ireland,  1588-1610. 

[Authorities.— The  materials  for  the  early  history  of  Ireland  are  described  by 
Professor  O'Curry  in  his  "Lectures  on  the  Materials  of  Ancient  Irish  History.' 
They  may  be  studied  by  the  general  reader  in  the  compilation  known  as  "The 
Anaals  of  the  Four  Masters,"  edited  by  Dr.  O'Donovan.  Its  ecclesiastical  history 


HISTOKY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

is  dryly  but  accurately  told  by  Dr.  Lanigan  ("  Ecclesiastical  History  of  Ireland  "). 
The  chief  authorities  for  the  earlier  conquest  under  Henry  the  Second  are  the  . 
"  Expugnatio  et  Topographia  Hibernica  "  of  Gerald  de  Barri,  edited  for  the  Rolls 
series  by  Mr.  Dimock,  and  the  Anglo-Norman  Poem  edited  by  M.  Francisque  Michel 
(London,  Pickering,  1857).  Mr.  Froude  has  devoted  especial  attention  to  the  rela- 
tions of  Ireland  with  the  Tudors ;  but  both  in  accuracy  and  soundness  of  judg- 
ment his  work  is  far  inferior  to  Mr.  Brewer's  examination  of  them  in  his  prefaces 
to  the  State  Papers  of  Henry  VIII.,  or  to  Mr.  Gardiner's  careful  and  temperate 
account  of  the  final  conquest  and  settlement  under  Mountjoy  and  Chichester 
(u  History  of  England  ").  The  two  series  of  "  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Ireland  " 
by  Mr.  A.  G.  Richey  are  remarkable  for  their  information  and  fairness.] 

While  England  became  " a  nest  of  singing  birds"  at  home, 

the' last  years  of  Elizabeth's  reign  were  years  of  splendor  and 

triumph  abroad.     The  defeat  of  the  Armada  was 

withSpahi  ^e  ^rs^  °^  a  ser^es  °^  defeats  which  broke  the 
power  of  Spain,  and  changed  the  political  aspect 
of  the  world.*  The  next  year  fifty  vessels  arid  fifteen  thousand 
men  were  sent  under  Drake  and  Norris  against  Lisbon.  The 
expedition  returned  baffled  to  England,  but  it  had  besieged 
Corunna,  pillaged  the  coast,  and  repulsed  a  Spanish  army  on 
Spanish  ground.  The  exhaustion  of  the  treasury  indeed  soon 
forced  Elizabeth  to  content  herself  with  issuing  commissions 
to  volunteers  ;  but  the  war  was  a  national  one,  and  the  nation 
waged  it  for  itself.  Merchants,  gentlemen,  nobles,  fitted  out 
privateers.  The  sea-dogs  in  ever-growing  numbers  scoured 
the  Spanish  Main ;  Spanish  galleons,  Spanish  merchant- 
ships,  were  brought  month  after  month  to  English  harbors. 
Philip  meanwhile  was  held  back  from  attack  on  England  by 
the  need  of  action  in  France.  The  Armada  had  hardly  been 
dispersed  when  the  assassination  of  Henry  the  Third,  the  last 
of  the  line  of  Valois,  raised  Henry  of  Navarre  to  the  throne ; 
and  the  accession  of  a  Protestant  sovereign  at  once  ranged  the 
Catholics  of  France  to  a  man  on  the  side  of  the  League  and 
its  leaders,  the  Guises.  The  League  rejected  Henry's  claims 
as  those  of  a  heretic,  proclaimed  the  Cardinal  of  Bourbon 
King  as  Charles  the  Tenth,  and  recognized  Philip  as  Protector 
of  France.  It  received  the  support  of  Spanish  soldiery  and 
Spanish  treasure  ;  and  this  new  effort  of  Spain,  an  effort 
whose  triumph  must  have  ended  in  her  ruin,  forced  Elizabeth 
to  aid  Henry  with  men  and  money  in  his  five  years'  struggle 
against  the  overwhelming  odds  which  seemed  arrayed  against 
him.  Torn  by  civil  strife,  it  seemed  as  though  France  might . 
be  turned  into  a  Spanish  dependency ;  and  it  was  from  its 


THE  CONQUEST   OF   IRELAND.      1588   TO   1610.      Ob'3 

coast  that  Philip  hoped  to  reach  England.  But  the  day  at 
last  went  against  the  Leaguers.  On  the  death  of  their  puppet 
king,  their  scheme  of  conferring  the  crown  on  Philip's  daugh- 
ter awoke  jealousies  in  the  house  of  Guise  itself,  while  it  gave 
strength  to  the  national  party  who  shrank  from  laying  France 
at  the  feet  of  Spain.  Henry's  submission  to  the  faith  held 
by  the  bulk  of  his  subjects  at  last  destroyed  all  chance  of  Philip's 
success.  "  Paris  is  well  worth  a  mass,"  was  the  famous  phrase 
in  which  Henry  explained  his  abandonment  of  the  Protestant 
cause,  but  the  step  did  more  than  secure  Paris.  It  dashed  to 
the  ground  all  hopes  of  further  resistance,  it  dissolved  the 
League,  and  enabled  the  king  at  the  head  of  a  reunited  peo- 
ple to  force  Philip  to  acknowledge  his  title  and  consent  to 
peace  in  the  Treaty  of  Vervins.  The  overthrow  of  Philip's 
hopes  in  France  had  been  made  more  bitter  by  the  final 
overthrow  of  his  hopes  at  sea.  In  1596  his  threat  of  a  fresh 
Armada  was  met  by  the  daring  descent  of  an  English  force 
upon  Cadiz.  The  town  was  plundered  and  burned  to  the 
ground  ;  thirteen  vessels  of  war  were  fired  in  its  harbor,  and 
the  stores  accumulated  for  the  expedition  utterly  destroyed. 
In  spite  of  this  crushing  blow  a  Spanish  fleet  gathered  in  the 
following  year  and  set  sail  for  the  English  coast ;  but  as  in 
the  case  of  its  predecessor  storms  proved  more  fatal  than 
the  English  guns,  and  the  ships  were  wrecked  and  almost 
destroyed  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay. 

With  the  ruin  of  Philip's  projects  in  France  and  the  asser- 
tion of  English  supremacy  at  sea,  all  danger  from  Spain 
passed  quietly  away,  and  Elizabeth  was  able  to  direct  her  un- 
divided energies  to  the  last  work  which  illustrates  her  reign. 

To  understand,  however,  the  final  conquest  of  Ireland,  we 
must  retrace  our  steps  to  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Second. 
The  civilization  of  the  island  had  at  that  time  fallen  far  below 
the  height  which  it  had  reached  when  its  missionaries  brought 
religion  and  learning  to  the  shores  of  Northurabria.  Learn- 
ing had  almost  disappeared.  The  Christianity  which  had 
been  a  vital  force  in  the  eighth  century  had  died  into  asceti- 
cism and  superstition  by  the  twelfth,  and  had  ceased  to  influ- 
ence the  morality  of  the  people  at  large.  The  Church,  desti- 
tute of  any  effective  organization,  was  powerless  to  do  the 
work  which  it  had  done  elsewhere  in  Western  Europe,  or  to 
introduce  order  into  the  anarchy  of  warring  tribes,  On  the 


564  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

contrary,  it  shared  the  anarchy  around  it.  Its  head-  the 
Coarb  or  Archbishop  of  Armagh,  sank  into  the  hereditary 
chieftain  of  a  clan  ;  its  bishops  were  without  dioeeseo,  and 
often  mere  dependents  of  the  greater  monasteries.  Hardly 
a  trace  of  any  central  authority  remained  to  knit  the  tribes 
into  a  single  nation,  though  the  King  of  Ulster  claimed  su- 
premacy over  his  fellow-kings  of  Minister,  Leinster,  and  Con- 
naught  ;  and  even  within  these  minor  kingships  the  regal 
authority  was  little  more  than  a  name.  The  one  living  tiling 
in  the  social  and  political  chaos  was  the  sept,  or  tribe,  or  clan, 
whose  institutions  remained  those  of  the  earliest  stage  of 
human  civilization.  Its  chieftainship  was  hereditary,  but, 
instead  of  passing  from  father  to  son,  it  was  held  by  whoever 
was  the  eldest  member  of  the  ruling  family  at  the  time.  The 
laud  belonging  to  the  tribe  was  shared  among  its  members, 
but  re-divided  among  them  at  certain  intervals  of  years.  The 
practise  of  "  fosterage/'  or  adoption,  bound  the  adopted  child 
more  closely  to  its  foster-parents  than  to  its  family  by  blood. 
Every  element  of  improvement  or  progress  which  had  been 
introduced  into  the  island  disappeared  in  the  long  and  des- 
perate struggle  with  the  Danes.  The  coast-towns,  such  as 
Dublin  or  Waterford,  which  the  invaders  founded,  remained 
Danish  in  blood  and  manners,  and  at  fend  with  the  Celtic 
tribes  around  them,  though  sometimes  forced  by  the  fortunes 
of  war  to  pay  tribute,  and  to  accept,  in  name  at  least,  the 
overlordship  of  the  Irish  kings.  It  was  through  these  towns, 
however,  that  the  intercourse  with  England,  which  had  ceased 
since  the  eighth  century,  was  to  some  extent  renewed  in  the 
eleventh.  Cut  off  from  the  Church  of  the  island  by  national 
antipathy,  the  Danish  coast-cities  applied  to  the  See  of  Can- 
terbury for  the  ordination  of  their  bishops,  and  acknowledged 
the  right  of  spiritual  supervision  in  Lanfranc  and  Anselm. 
The  relations  thus  formed  were  drawn  closer  by  the  slave- 
trade,  which  the  Conqueror  and  Bishop  Wulfstau  succeeded 
for  a  time  in  suppressing  at  Bristol,  but  which  appears  to 
have  quickly  revived.  In  the  twelfth  century  Ireland  was 
full  of  Englishmen,  who  had  been  kidnapped  and  sold  into 
slavery,  in  spite  of  royal  prohibitions  and  the  spiritual  menaces 
of  the  English  Church.  The  state  of  the  country  afforded  a 
legitimate  pretext  for  war,  had  a  pretext  been  needed  by  the 
Ambition  of  Henry  the  Second  ;  and  within  a  few  months  of 


THE  CONQUEST   OF   IRELAND.      1588  TO  1610.      565 

that  king's  coronation  John  of  Salisbury  was  despatched  to 
obtain  the  Papal  sanction  for  an  invasion  of  the  island.  The 
enterprise,  as  it  was  laid  before  Pope  Hadrian  the  Fourth,  took 
the  color  of  a  crusade.  The  isolation  of  Irchind  from  the 
general  body  of  Christendom,  the  absence  of  learning  and 
civilization,  the  scandalous  vices  of  its  people,  were  alleged 
as  the  grounds  of  Henry's  action.  It  was  the  general  belief 
of  the  time  that  all  islands  fell  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Papal  See,  and  it  was  as  a  possession  of  the  Roman  Church 
that  Henry  sought  Hadrian's  permission  to  enter  Ireland. 
His  aim  was  '•  to  enlarge  the  bounds  of  the  Church,  to  re- 
strain the  progress  of  vices,  to  correct  the  manners  of  its 
people,  and  to  plant  virtue  among  them,  and  to  increase  the 
Christian  religion."  He  engaged  to  "subject  the  people  to 
laws,  to  extirpate  vicious  customs,  to  respect  the  rights  of  the 
native  Churches,  and  to  enforce  the  payment  of  Pctur's 
pence"  as  a  recognition  of  the  overlordship  of  the  Roman 
See.  Hadrian  by  his  bull  approved  the  enterprise  as  one 
prompted  by  "  the  ardor  of  faith  and  love  of  religion/'  and 
declared  his  will  that  the  people  of  Ireland  should  receive 
Henry  with  all  honor,  and  revere  him  as-  their  lord.  The 
Papal  bull  was  produced  in  a  great  council  of  the  English 
baronage,  but  the  opposition  of  the  Empress  Matilda 
and  the  difficulties  of  the  enterprise  forced  on  Henry  a 
temporary  abandonment  of  his  designs,  and  his  energies  were 
diverted  for  the  moment  to  plans  of  continental  aggrandize- 
ment. 

Twelve  years  had  passed  when  an  Irish  chieftain,  Dermod, 
Kinir  of  Leinster,  presented  himself  at  Henry's  Court,  and 
did  homage  to  him  for  the  dominions  from  which 
he  had  been  driven  in  one  of  the   endless   civil  Strongbow. 
wars  which  distracted  the  island.  Dermod  returned  __ 
to  Ireland  with  promises  of  aid  from  the  English  knighthood  ; 
and  was  soon  followed  by  Robert  FitzStephen,  a  son  of  the 
Constable  of  Cardigan,  with  a  small  band  of  a  hundred  and 
forty  knights,  sixty  men-at-arms,  and  three  or  four  hundred 
Welsh  archers.     Small  as  was  the  number  of  the  adventu 
their  horses  and  arms  proved  irresistible  to  the  Irish  kernes  ; 
a  sally  of  the  men  of  Wexford  was  avenged  by  the  storm  of 
their"  town  ;  the  Ossory  clans  were  defeated  with  a  terrible 
slaughter,  and  Dermod,  seizing  a  head   from  the  heap  of 


566  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

trophies  which  his  men  piled  at  his  feet,  tore  off  in  savage 
triumph  its  nose  and  lips  with  his  teeth.  The  arrival  of 
fresh  forces  under  Maurice  Fitzgerald  heralded  the  coming 
of  Eichard  of  Clare,  Earl  of  Pembroke  and  Striguil,  a  ruined 
baron  later  known  by  the  nickname  of  Strongbow,  who  in 
defiance  of  Henry's  prohibition  landed  near  Waterford  with 
a  force  of  fifteen  hundred  men,  as  Dermod's  mercenary. 
The  city  was  at  once  stormed,  and  the  united  forces  of  the  earl 
and  king  marched  to  the  siege  of  Dublin.  In  spite  of  a  relief 
attempted  by  the  King  of  Coniiaught,  who  was  recognized  as 
overking  of  the  island  by  the  rest  of  the  tribes,  Dublin  was 
taken  by  surprise  ;  and  the  marriage  of  Richard  with  Eva, 
Dermod's  daughter,  left  him  on  the  death  of  his  father-in-law, 
which  followed  quickly  on  these  successes,  master  of  his 
kingdom  of  Leinster.  The  new  lord  had  soon,  however,  to 
hurry  back  to  England,  and  appease  the  jealousy  of  Henry 
by  the  surrender  of  Dublin  to  the  Crown,  by  doing  homage 
for  Leinster  as  an  English  lordship,  and  by  accompanying  the 
King  in  his  voyage  to  the  new  dominion  which  the  adven- 
turers had  won.  Had  Henry  been  allowed  by  fortune  to  carry 
out  his  purpose,  the  conquest  of  Ireland  would  now  have 
been  accomplished.  The  King  of  Connaught  indeed  and  the 
chiefs  of  Northern  Ulster  refused  him  homage,  but  the  rest 
of  the  Irish  tribes  owned  his  suzerainty  ;  the  bishops  in 
synod  at  Cashel  recognized  him  as  their  lord  ;  and  lie  was 
preparing  to  penetrate  to  the  north  and  west,  and  to  secure 
his  conquest  by  a  systematic  erection  of  castles  throughout 
the  country,  when  the  troubles  which  followed  on  the  murder 
of  Archbishop  Thomas  recalled  him  hurriedly  to  Normandy. 
The  lost  opportunity  never  returned.  Connaught,  indeed, 
bowed  to  a  nominal  acknowledgment  of  Henry's  overlord- 
ship  ;  John  de  Courcy  penetrated  into  Ulster  and  established 
himself  at  Downpatrick  ;  and  the  king  planned  for  a  while 
the  establishment  of  his  youngest  son,  John,  as  Lord  of 
Ireland.  But  the  levity  of  the  young  prince,  who  mocked 
the  rude  dresses  of  the  native  chieftains,  and  plucked  them 
in  insult  by  the  beard,  compelled  his  recall ;  and  nothing  but 
the  feuds  and  weakness  of  the  Irish  tribes  enabled  the  adven- 
turers to  hold  the  districts  of  Drogheda,  Dublin,  Wexford, 
.  Waterford  and  Cork,  which  formed  what  was  thenceforth 
known  as  the  "  English  Pale," 


THE   OOtfQtTEaT    OF   IREl.\M>.       1~,M*    TO 

Had  the  Irish  driven  their  invaders  into  the  sea,  or  the 
English  succeeded  in  the  complete  conquest  of  Ireland,  the 
misery  of  its  after  history  might  have  been  avoided. 
A  struggle  such  as  that  in  which  Scotland  drove  out 
its  conquerors  might  have  produced  a  spirit  of  pa- 
triotism and  national  union, which  would  have  formed  a  people 
out  of  the  mass  of  warring  clans.  A  conquest  such  as  that  of 
England  by  the  Normans  would  have  spread  at  any  rate  the 
law,  the  order,  the  peace  and  civilization  of  the  conquering 
country  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  conquered.  Un- 
happily Ireland,  while  powerless  to  effect  its  deliverance,  was 
strong  enough  to  hold  its  assailants  partially  at  bay.  The 
country  was  broken  into  two  halves,  whose  conflict  has  never 
ceased.  The  barbarism  of  the  native  tribes  was  only  inten- 
sified by  their  hatred  of  the  more  civilized  intruders.  The 
intruders  themselves,  penned  up  in  the  narrow  limits  of  the 
Pale,  fell  rapidly  to  the  level  of  the  barbarism  about  them. 
All  the  lawlessness,  the  ferocity,  the  narrowness,  of  feudalism 
broke  out  unchecked  in  the  horde  of  adventurers  who  held  the 
land  by  their  sword.  It  needed  the  stern  vengeance  of  John, 
whose  army  stormed  their  strongholds,  and  drove  the  leading 
barons  into  exile,  to  preserve  even  their  fealty  to  the  English 
Crown.  John  divided  the  Pale  into  counties,  and  ordered 
the  observance  of  the  English  law  ;  but  the  departure  of  his 
army  was  the  signal  for  a  return  of  the  anarchy  which  he  had 
trampled  under  foot.  Every  Irishman  without  the  Pale  was 
deemed  an  enemy  and  a  robber,  nor  was  his  murder  cog- 
nizable by  the  law.  Half  the  subsistence  of  the  barons  was 
drawn  from  forays  across  the  border,  and  these  forays  were 
avenged  by  incursions  of  native  marauders,  which  carried 
havoc  to  the  walls  of  Dublin.  The  English  settlers  in  the 
Pale  itself  were  harried  and  oppressed  by  enemy  :iml  pro- 
tector alike ;  while  the  feuds  of  the  English  lords  wasted 
their  strength,  and  prevented  any  effective  combination  for 
conquest  or  defense.  The  landing  of  a  Scotch  force  after 
Bannockburn  with  Edward  Bruce  at  its  head,  and  a  general 
rising  of  the  Irish  which  welcomed  this  deliverer,  drove 
indeed  the  barons  of  the  Pale  to  a  momentary  union  ;  and  in 
the  bloody  field  of  Athenree  their  valor  was  proved  by  the 
slaughter  of  eleven  thousand  of  their  foes,  and  the  almost 
complete  extinction  of  the  sept  of  the  O'Connors.  But  with 


568  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

victory  returned  anarchy  and  degradation.  The  barons  sank 
more  and  more  into  Irish  chieftains  ;  the  FitzMaurices,  who 
became  Earls  of  Desmond,  and  whose  great  territory  in  the 
south  was  erected  into  a  County  Palatine,  adopted  the  dress 
and  manners  of  the  natives  around  them  ;  and  the  provisions 
of  the  Statute  of  Kilkenny  were  fruitless  to  check  the  growth 
of  i-his  evil.  The  Statute  forbade  the  adoption  by  any  man 
of  English  blood  of  the  Irish  language  or  name  or  dress  ;  it  en- 
forced within  the  Pale  the  use  of  English  law,  and  made  that 
of  the  native  or  Brehon  law,  which  was  gaining  ground,  an  act 
of  treason  ;  it  made  treasonable  any  marriage  ol  the  Englishry 
with  persons  of  Irish  blood, or  any  adoption  of  English  children 
by  Irish  foster-fathers.  But  stern  as  they  were,  these  provisions 
proved  fruitless  to  check  the  fusion  of  the  two  races,  while 
the  growing  independence  of  the  Lords  of  the  Pale  threw  off 
all  but  the  semblance  of  obedience  to  the  English  government. 
It  was  this  which  stirred  Richard  the  Second  to  a  serious 
effort  for  the  conquest  and  organization  of  the  island.  He 
landed  with  an  army  at  Waterford,  and  received  the  general 
submission  of  the  native  chieftains.  But  the  Lords  of  the 
Pale  held  sullenly  aloof  ;  and  Richard  had  no  sooner  quitted 
the  island  than  the  Irish  in  turn  refused  to  carry  out  their 
promise  of  quitting  Leinster.  In  1398  his  lieutenant  in 
Ireland,  the  Earl  of  March,  was  slain  in  battle,  and  Richard 
resolved  to  complete  his  work  by  a  fresh  invasion  ;  but  the 
troubles  in  England  soon  interrupted  his  efforts,  and  all 
traces  of  his  work  vanished  with  the  embarkation  of  his 
soldiers. 

With  the  renewal  of  the  French  wars,  and  the  outburst  of 
the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  Ireland  was  again  left  to  itself,  and 
English  sovereignty  over  the  island  dwindled  to  a  shadow. 
But  at  last  Henry  the  Seventh  took  the  country  in  hand. 
Sir  Edward  Poynings  was  despatched  as  deputy  ;  the  Lords 
of  the  Pale  were  soared  by  the  seizure  of  their  leader,  the 
Earl  of  Kildare  j  the  Parliament  of  the  Pale  was  forbidden 
by  the  famous  Poynings'  Act  to  treat  of  any  matters  save 
those  first  approved  of  by  the  English  king  nnd  his  Council. 
For  a  while  however  the  Lords  of  the  Pale  must  still  serve  as 
the  English  garrison  against  the  unoonqucred  Irish,  and 
Henry  made  his  prisoner  the  Earl  of  Kildnre  Lord  Deputy. 
"All  Ireland  cannot  rule  this  mail,"  grumbled  his  ministers. 


THE  CONQUEST  OF   IRELAND.      1588   TO    1610.      569 

"Then  shall  ho  rule  all  Ireland,"  replied  tlie  king.  But 
though  Henry  the  Seventh  had  begun  the  work  of  bridling 
Ireland  he  had  no  strength  for  exacting  a  real  submission  ; 
and  the  great  Norman  Lords  of  the  Pule,  the  Butlers  and 
Gerald i nes,  the  De  hi  Poors  and  the  Fitzpatricks,  though 
subjects  in  name,  were  in  fact  deGant  of  royal  authority.  In 
manners  and  outer  seeming  they  had  sunk  into  mere  natives  ; 
their  fends  were  as  incessant  as  those  of  the  Irish  septs  ;  and 
their  despotism  over  the  miserable  inhabitants  of  the  Pale 
combined  the  horrors  of  feudal  oppression  with  those  of  Celtic 
anarchy.  Crushed  by  taxation,  by  oppression,  by  misgovern- 
ment,  plundered  alike  by  Celtic  marauders  and  by  the  troops 
levied  to  disperse  them,  the  wretched  descendants  of  the 
first  Englioh  settlers  preferred  even  Irish  misrule  to  English 
'«  order,"  and  the  border  of  the  Pale  retreated  steadily 
towards  Dublin.  The  towns  of  the  seaboard,  sheltered  by 
their  walls  and  their  municipal  self-government,  formed  the 
only  exceptions  to  the  general  chaos  ;  elsewhere  throughout 
its  dominions  the  English  Government,  though  still  strong 
enough  to  bre:ik  down  any  open  revolt,  was  a  mere  phantom 
of  rule.  From  the  Celtic  tribes  without  the  Pale  even  the 
remnant  of  civilization  and  of  native  union  which  had  lin- 
gered on  to  the  time  of  Strongbow  had  vanished  away.  The 
feuds  of  the  Irish  septs  were  as  bitter  as  their  hatred  of  the 
stranger  ;  and  the  Government  at  Dublin  found  it  easy  to 
maintain  a  strife,  which  saved  it  the  necessity  of  self-defense, 
among  a  people  whose  "  nature  is  such  that  for  money  one 
shall  have  the  son  to  war  against  his  father,  and  the  father 
against  his  child."  During  the  first  thirty  years  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  the  annals  of  the  country  which  remained 
under  native  rule  record  more  than  a  hundred  raids  and  bat- 
tles between  clans  of  the  north  alone.  But  the  time  was  at 
last  come  for  a  vigorous  attempt  on  the  part  of  England  to 
introduce  order  into  this  chaos  of  turbulence  and  misrule. 
To  Henry  the  Eighth  the  policy  which  had  been  pursued  by 
his  father,  of  ruling  Ireland  through  the  great  Irish  lords, 
was  utterly  hateful.  His  p  irpose  was  to  rule  in  Ireland  as 
thoroughly  and  effectively  as  he  ruled  in  England,  and  dur- 
ing the  latter  half  of  his  reign  he  bent  his  whole  energies  to 
accomplish  this  aim.  From  the  first  hours  of  his  accession, 
indeed,  the  Irish  lords  felt  the  heavier  hand  of  a  master. 


570  HISTORY   OF   THE"  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

The  Geraldines,  who  had  been  suffered  under  the  preceding 
reign  to  govern  Ireland  in  the  name  of  the  Crown,  were  quick 
to  discover  that  the  Crown  would  no  longer  stoop  to  be  their 
tool.  Their  head,  the  Earl  of  Kildare,  was  called  to  England 
and  thrown  into  the  Tower.  The  great  house  resolved  to 
frighten  England  again  into  a  conviction  of  its  helplessness  ; 
and  a  rising  of  Lord  Thomas  Fitzgerald  followed  the  usual 
fashion  of  Irish  revolts.  A  murder  of  the  Archbishop  of 
Dublin,  a  capture  of  the  city,  a  repulse  before  its  castle,  a  har- 
rying of  the  Pale,  ended  in  a  sudden  disappearance  of  the 
rebels  among  the  bogs  and  forests  of  the  border  on  the  ad- 
vance of  the  English  forces.  It  had  been  usual  to  meet  such 
an  onset  as  this  by  a  raid  of  the  same  character,  by  a  corre- 
sponding failure  before  the  castle  of  the  rebellious  noble,  and 
a  retreat  like  his  own,  which  served  as  a  preliminary  to 
negotiations  and  a  compromise.  Unluckily  for  the  G-eral- 
dines,  Henry  had  resolved  to  take  Ireland  seriously  in  hand, 
and  he  had  Cromwell  to  execute  his  will.  Skeffington,  a 
new  Lord  Deputy,  brought  with  him  a  train  of  artillery, 
which  worked  a  startling  change  in  the  political  aspect  of 
the  island.  The  castles  which  had  hitherto  sheltered  rebel- 
lion were  battered  into  ruins.  Maynooth,  a  stronghold  from 
which  the  Geraldines  threatened  Dublin  and  ruled  the  Pale 
at  their  will,  was  beaten  down  in  a  fortnight.  So  crushing 
and  unforeseen  was  the  blow  that  resistance  was  at  once  at 
an  end.  Not  only  was  the  power  of  the  great  Norman  house 
which  had  towered  over  Ireland  utterly  broken,  but  only  a 
single  boy  was  left  to  preserve  its  name. 

With  the  fall  of  the  Fitzgeralds  Ireland  felt  itself  in  a 
master's  grasp.  "  Irishmen,"  wrote  one  of  the  Lord  Justices 
to  Cromwell,  "  were  never  in  such  fear  as  now. 
r^e  king's  sessions  are  bekig  kept  in  five  shires 
more  than  formerly/'  Not  only  were  the  Eng- 
lishmen of  the  Pale  at  Henry's  feet,  but  the  kernes  of  Wick- 
low  and  Wexford  sent  in  their  submission ;  and  for  the  first 
time  in  men's  memory  an  English  army  appeared  in  Munster 
and  reduced  the  south  to  obedience.  A  castle  of  the  O'Briens; 
which  guarded  the  passage  of  the  Shannon,  was  carried  by 
assault,  and  its  fall  carried  with  it  the  submission  of  Clare. 
The  capture  of  Athlone  brought  about  the  reduction  of  Con- 
naught,  and  assured  the  loyalty  of  the  great  Norman  house 


THE   CONQUEST   OF   IRELAND.      1688   TO   1610.      571 

of  the  De  Burghs  or  Bourkes,  who  had  assumed  aii  almost 
royal  authority  in  the  west.  The  resistance  of  the  tribes  of 
the  north  was  broken  in  the  victory  of  Bellahoe.  In  seven 
years,  partly  through  the  vigor  of  Skeffington's  successor, 
Lord  Leonard  Grey,  and  still  more  through  the  resolute  will 
of  Henry  and  Cromwell,  the  power  of  the  Crown,  which  had 
been  limited  to  the  walls  of  Dublin,  was  acknowledged  over 
the  length  and  breadth  of  Ireland.  But  submission  was  far 
from  being  all  that  Henry  desired.  His  aim  was  to  civilize 
the  people  whom  he  had  conquered — to  rule  not  by  force  but 
by  law.  But  the  only  conception  of  law  which  the  King  or 
his  ministers  could  frame  was  that  of  English  law.  The 
customary  law  which  prevailed  without  the  Pale,  the  native 
system  of  clan  government  and  common  tenure  of  land  by 
the  tribe,  as  well  as  the  poetry  and  literature  which  threw 
their  luster  over  the  Irish  tongue,  were  either  unknown  to 
the  English  statesmen,  or  despised  by  them  as  barbarous. 
The  one  mode  of  civilizing  Ireland  and  redressing  its  chaotic 
misrule  which  presented  itself  to  their  minds  was  that  of 
destroying  the  whole  Celtic  tradition  of  the  Irish  people — 
that  of  "making  Ireland  English"  in  manners,  in  law,  and 
in  tongue.  The  Deputy,  Parliament,  Judges,  Sheriffs, 
which  already  existed  within  the  Pale,  furnished  a  faint  copy 
of  English  institutions  ;  and  these,  it  was  hoped,  might  be 
gradually  extended  over  the  whole  island.  The  English 
language  and  mode  of  life  would  follow,  it  was  believed,  the 
English  law.  The  one  effectual  way  of  bringing  about  such 
a  change  as  this  lay  in  a  complete  conquest  of  the  island,  and 
in  its  colonization  by  English  settlers  ;  but  from  this  course, 
pressed  on  him  as  it  was  by  his  own  lieutenants  and  by  the 
settlers  of  the  Pale,  even  the  iron  will  of  Cromwell  shrank. 
It  was  at  once  too  bloody  and  too  expensive.  To  win  over 
the  chiefs,  to  turn,  them  by  policy  and  a  putii-nt  generosity 
into  English  nobles,  to  use  the  traditional  devotion  of  their 
tribal  dependents  as  a  means  of  diffusing  the  new  civilization 
of  their  chiefs,  to  trust  to  time  and  steady  government  for 
the  gradual  reformation  of  the  country,  was  a  policy  safer, 
cheaper,  more  humane,  and  more  statesmanlike.  It  was  this 
system  which,  even  before  the  fall  of  the  Geraldines,  H« 
had  resolved  to  adopt  ;  and  it  was  this  which  he  pressed  on 
Ireland  when  the  conquest  laid  it  at  his  feet.  The  chief* 


672  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

were  to  be  persuaded  of  the  advantage  of  justice  and  legal 
rule.  Their  fear  of  any  purpose  to  "  expel  them  from  their 
lands  and  dominions  lawfully  possessed  "  was  to  be  dispelled 
by  a  promise  "  to  conserve  them  as  their  own.'"  Even  their 
remonstrances  against  the  introduction  of  English  law  were 
to  be  regarded,  and  the  course  of  justice  to  be  enforced  or 
mitigated  according  to  the  circumstances  of  the  country. 
In  the  resumption  of  lands  or  rights  which  clearly  belonged 
to  the  Crown  "  sober  ways,  politic  shifts,  and  amiable  per- 
suasions" were  to  be  preferred  to  rigorous  dealing.  It  was 
this  system  of  conciliation  which  was  in  the  main  carried  out 
by  the  English  Government  under  Henry  and  his  two  suc- 
cessors. Chieftain  after  chieftain  was  won  over  to  the  ac- 
ceptance of  the  indenture  which  guaranteed  him  in  the  pos- 
session of  his  lands,  and  left  his  authority  over  his  tribesmen 
untouched,  on  condition  of  a  pledge  of  loyalty,  of  abstinence 
from  illegal  wars  and  exactions  on  his  fellow-subjects,  and  of 
rendering  a  fixed  tribute  and  service  in-  war-time  to  the 
Crown.  The  sole  test  of  loyalty  demanded  was  the  accept- 
ance of  an  English  title,  and  the  education  of  a  son  at  the 
English  court;  though  in  some  cases,  like  that  of  the 
O'Neills,  a  promise  was  exacted  to  use  the  English  language 
and  dress,  and  to  encourage  tillage  and  husbandry.  Com- 
pliance with  conditions  such  as  these  was  procured,  not 
merely  by  the  terror  of  the  royal  name,  but  by  heavy  bribes. 
The  chieftains  in  fact  profited  greatly  by  the  change.  Not 
only  were  the  lands  of  the  suppressed  abbeys  granted  to  them 
on  their  assumption  of  their  new  titles,  but  the  English  law- 
courts,  ignoring  the  Irish  custom  by  which  the  land  belonged 
to  the  tribe  at  large,  regarded  the  chiefs  as  sole  proprietors 
of  the  soil. 

The  merits  of  the  system  were  unquestionable  ;  its  faults 

were  such  as  a  statesman  of  that  day  conld  hardly  be  expected 

to  perceive.     The  Tudor  politicians  held  that  the 

Tm  tioa  one  n°Pe  ^or  tue  reeenera-'i011  °f  Ireland  lay  in  its 
absorbing  the  civilization  of  England.  The  pro- 
hibition of  the  national  dress,  customs,  laws,  and  language 
must  have  seemed  to  them  merely  the  suppression  of  a  bar- 
barism which  stood  in  the  way  of  all  improvement  At  this 
moment  however  a  fatal  blunder  plunged  Ireland  into  religious 
strife.  The  religious  aspect  of  Ireland  was  hardly  less  chaotic 


THE  CONQUEST   OF  IRELAND.      1588   TO   1610.      578 

than  its  political  aspect  had  been.  Ever  since  Strougbow's 
landing  there  had  been  no  one  Irish  Church,  simply  because 
there  had  been  no  one  Irish  nation.  'There  was  not  the  slightest 
difference  in  doctrine  or  discipline  between  the  Church  with- 
out the  Pale  and  the  Church  within  it.  But  within  the  Pale 
the  clergy  were  exclusively  of  English  blood  and  speech,  and 
•without  it  they  were  exclusively  of  Irish.  Irishmen  were 
shut  out  by  law  from  abbeys  and  churches  within  the  Eng- 
lish boundary  ;  and  the  ill-will  of  the  natives  shut  out  Eng- 
lishmen from  churches  and  abbeys  outside  it.  As  to  the  re- 
ligious state  of  the  country,  it  was  much  on  a  level  with  its 
political  condition.  Feuds  and  misrule  had  told  fatally  on 
ecclesiastical  discipline.  The  bishops  were  political  officers, 
or  hard  fighters  like  the  chiefs  around  them  ;  their  sees  were 
neglected,  their  cathedrals  abandoned  to  decay.  Through 
whole  dioceses  the  churches  lay  in  ruins  and  without  priests. 
The  only  preaching  done  in  the  country  was  done  by  the 
begging  friars,  and  the  results  of  the  friars'  preaching  were 
small.  "If  the  king  do  not  provide  a  remedy,"  it  was  said 
in  1525,  "  there  will  bo  no  more  Christentie  than  in  the  mid- 
dle of  Turkey."  Unfortunately  the  remedy  which  Henry 
provided  was  worse  than  the  disease.  Politically  Ireland 
was  one  with  England,  and  the  great  revolution  which  was 
severing  the  one  country  from  the  Papacy  extended  itself 
naturally  to  the  other.  The  results  of  it  indeed  at  first 
seemed  small  enough.  The  Supremacy,  a  question  which 
hud  convulsed  England,  passed  over  into  Ireland  to  meet  its 
only  obstacle  in  a  general  indifference.  Everybody  was  ready 
to  accept  it  without  a  thought  of  its  consequences.  The 
bishops  and  clergy  within  the  Pale  bent  to  the  king's  will  as 
easily  as  their  fellows  in  England,  and  their  example  was 
followed  by  at  least  four  prelates  of  dioceses  without  the  Pale. 
The  native  chieftains  made  no  more  scruple  than  the  Lords 
of  the  Council  in  renouncing  obedience  to  the  Bishop  of 
Rome,  and  in  acknowledging  Henry  as  the  "Supreme  Head 
of  the  Church  of  England  and  Ireland  under  Christ."  There 
was  none  of  the  resistance  to  the  dissolution  of  the  abbeys 
which  had  been  witnessed  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel, 
and  the  greedy  chieftains  showed  themselves  perfectly  willing 
to  share  the  plunder  of  the  Church.  But  the  results  of  the 
measure  were  fatal  to  the  little  culture  and  religion  which 


574  HiSTOHY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

even  the  past  centuries  of  disorder  had  spared.  Such  as  they 
were,  the  religious  houses  were  the  only  schools  which  Ire- 
land contained.  The  system  of  vicars,  so  general  in  England, 
was  rare  in  Ireland  ;  churches  in  the  patronage  of  the  abbeys 
were  for  the  most  part  served  by  the  religious  themselves, 
and  the  dissolution  of  their  houses  suspended  public  worship 
over  large  districts  of  the  country.  The  friars,  hitherto  the 
only  preachers,  and  who  continued  to  labor  and  teach  in 
spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  Government,  were  thrown  neces- 
sarily into  a  position  of  antagonism  to  the  English  rule. 

Had  the  ecclesiastical  changes  which  were  forced  on  the 
country  ended  here,  however,  little  harm  would  in  the  end 

Protes-      have  been  done.     But  in  England  the  breach  with 
tantism  in   Kome,  the  destruction  of  the  monastic  orders,  and 

Ireland.  ^he  establishment  of  the  Supremacy,  had  roused  in 
a  portion  of  the  people  itself  a  desire  for  theological  change 
which  Henry  shared,  and  was  cautiously  satisfying.  In  Ire- 
land the  spirit  of  the  Reformation  never  existed  among  the 
people  at  all.  They  accepted  the  legislative  measures  passed 
in  the  English  Parliament  without  any  dream  of  theological 
consequences,  or  of  any  change  in  the  doctrine  or  ceremonies 
of  the  Church.  Not  a  single  voice  demanded  the  abolition  of 
pilgrimages,  or  the  destruction  of  images,  or  the  reform  of 
public  worship.  The  mission  of  Archbishop  Browne  "  for 
the  plucking  down  of  idols  and  extinguishing  of  idolatry" 
was  a  first  step  in  the  long  effort  of  the  English  Government 
to  force  a  new  faith  on  a  people  who  to  a  man  clung  pas- 
sionately to  their  old  religion.  Browne's  attempts  at  "  tun- 
ing the  pulpits  "  were  met  by  a  sullen  and  significant  oppo- 
sition. "Neither  by  gentle  exhortation/'  the  Primate  wrote 
to  Cromwell,  "  nor  by  evangelical  instruction,  neither  by 
oath  of  them  solemnly  taken,  nor  yet  by  threats  of  sharp  cor- 
rection may  I  persuade  or  induce  any,  whether  religious  or. 
secular,  since  my  coming  over,  once  to  preach  the  Word  of 
God  nor  the  just  title  of  our  illustrious  Prince,"  Even  the 
acceptance  of  the  Supremacy,  which  had  been  so  quietly 
effected,  was  brought  into  question  when  its  results  became 
clear.  The  Bishops  abstained  from  compliance  with  the 
order  to  erase  the  Pope's  name  out  of  their  mass-books.  Tho 
pulpits  remained  steadily  silent.  When  Browne  ordered  the 
destruction  of  the  images  and  relics  in  his  ow.n  ..cathedral,  ;lie 


THE  CONQUEST   OP   IRELAND.      1588  TO    1610.      675 

had  to  report  that  the  prior  and  canons  "  find  them  so  sweet 
for  their  gain  that  they  heed  not  my  words."  Cromwell, 
however,  was  resolute  for  a  religious  uniformity  between  tho 
two  islands,  and  the  Primate  borrowed  some  of  his  patron's 
vigor.  Recalcitrant  priests  were  thrown  into  prison,  images 
were  plucked  down  from  the  roodloft,  and  the  most  vener- 
able of  Irish  relics,  the  Staff  of  St.  Patrick,  was  burnt  in  the 
market-place.  But  he  found  no  support  in  his  vigor,  save 
from  across  the  Channel.  The  Irish  Council  was  cold.  The 
Lord  Deputy  knelt  to  say  prayers  before  an  image  at  Trim. 
A  sullen,  dogged  opposition  baffled  Cromwell's  efforts,  and 
his  full  was  followed  by  along  respite  in  the  religious  changes 
which  he  was  forcing  on  the  conquered  dependency.  With 
the  accession  of  Edward  the  Sixth,  however,  the  system  of 
change  was  renewed  with  all  the  energy  of  Protestant  zeal. 
The  bishops  were  summoned  before  the  Deputy,  Sir  Anthony 
St.,  Leger,  to  receive  the  new  English  Liturgy,  which,  though 
written  in  a  tongue  as  strange  to  the  native  Irish  as  Latin 
itself,  was  now  to  supersede  the  Latin  service-book  in  every 
diocese.  The  order  was  the  signal  for  an  open  strife.  "  Now 
shall  every  illiterate  fellow  read  Mass,"  burst  forth  Dowdall, 
the  Archbishop  of  Armagh,  as  he  flung  out  of  the  chamber 
with  all  but  one  of  his  suffragans  at  his  heels.  Archbishop 
Browne,  of  Dublin,  on  the  other  hand,  was  followed  in  his 
profession  of  obedience  by  the  Bishops  of  Meath,  Limerick, 
and  Kildare.  The  Government,  however,  was  far  from  quail- 
ing before  the  division  of  the  episcopate.  Dowdall  was  driven 
from  the  country,  and  the  vacant  sees  were  filled  with  Pro- 
testants, like  Bale,  of  the  most  advanced  type.  But  no 
change  could  be  wrought  by  measures  such  as  these  on  the 
opinions  of  the  people  themselves.  The  new  episcopal  re- 
formers spoke  no  Irish,  and  of  their  English  sermons  not  a 
word  was  understood  by  the  rude  kernes  around  the  pulpit. 
The  native  priests  remained  silent.  "As  for  preaching  we 
have  none,"  reports  a  zealous  Protestant,  "  without  which 
the  ignorant  can  have  no  knowledge."  The  prelates  who 
used  the  new  Prayer-book  were  simply  regarded  as  heretics. 
The  Bishop  of  Meath  was  assured  by  one  of  his  flock  that, 
"  if  the  country  wist  how,  they  would  eat  you."  Protestant- 
ism had  failed  to  wre^t  a  single  Irishman  from  his  older  con- 
victions, but  it  succeeded  in  uniting  all  Ireland  against  the 


576  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Crown.  The  old  political  distinctions  which  had  been  pro- 
duced by  the  conquest  of  Strongbow  faded  before  the  new 
struggle  for  a  common  faith.  The  population  within  the 
Pale  and  without  it  became  one,  "not  as  the  Irish  nation," 
it  has  been  acutely  said,  "  but  as  Catholics."  A  new  sense 
of  national  identity  was  found  in  the  identity  of  religion. 
"  Both  English  and  Irish  begin  to  oppose  your  Lordship's 
orders,"  Browne  had  written  years  before  to  Cromwell,  "and 
to  lay  aside  their  national  old  quarrels." 

With  the  accession  of  Mary  the  shadowy  form  of  this  earlier 
Irish   Protestantism   melted  quietly  away.     There  were  no 

Protestants  in  Ireland  save  the  new  bishops;  and 
anOlary    wnen  Male  n&d  fled  over  sen,  and  his  fellow-prelates 

had  been  deprived,  the  Church  resumed  its  old 
appearance.  No  attempt,  indeed,  was  made  to  restore  the 
monasteries  ;  and  Mary  exercised  her  supremacy,  deposed 
and  appointed  bishops,  and  repudiated  Papal  interference 
with  her  ecclesiastical  acts,  as  vigorously  as  her  father. 
But  the  Mass  was  restored,  the  old  modes  of  religious  wor- 
ship were  again  held  in  honor,  and  religions  dissension  be- 
tween the  Government  and  its  Irish  subjects  was  for  the  time 
at  an  end.  With  the  close,  however,  of  one  danger  came  the 
rise  of  another.  England  was  growing  tired  of  the  policy 
of  conciliation  which  had  been  steadily  pursued  by  Henry  the 
Eighth  and  his  successor.  As  yet  it  had  been  rewarded  with 
precisely  the  sort  of  success  which  Wolsey  and  Cromwell  an- 
ticipated :  the  chiefs  had  come  quietly  in  to  the  plan,  and  their 
septs  had  followed  them  in  submission  to  the  new  order. 
"  The  winning  of  the  Earl  of  Desmond  was  the  winning  of 
the  rest  of  Munster  with  small  charges.  The  making 
O'Brien  an  Earl  made  all  that  country  obedient.''  The 
Macwilliam  became  Lord  Clanrickard,  and  the  Fitzpatricks 
Barons  of  Upper  Ossory.  A  visit  of  the  great  northern  chief 
who  had  accepted  the  title  of  Earl  of  Tyrone  to  the  English 
Court  was  regarded  as  a  marked  step  in  the  process  of  civili- 
zation. In  the  south,  where  the  system  of  English  law  was 
slowly  spreading,  the  chieftains  sat  on  the  bench  side  by 
side  with  the  English  justices  of  the  peace  ;  and  something 
had  been  done  to  check  the  feuds  and  disorder  of  the  wild 
tribes  between  Limerick  and  Tipperary.  "Men  may  puss 
quietly  throughout  these  countries  without  danger  of  robbery 


THE   CONQUEST  OF   IRELAND.      1588   TO    1610.      677 

or  other  displeasure."  In  the  Clanrickard  county,  once 
wasted  with  war,  "plowing  increassth  daily."  In  Tyrone 
and  the  north,  indeed,  the  old  disorder  reigned  without  a 
check  ;  and  every wheie  the  process  of  improvement  tried 
the  temper  of  the  English  Deputies  by  the  slowness  of  its 
advance.  The  only  hope  of  any  real  progress  lay  in  patience  ; 
and  there  were  signs  that  the  Government  at  Dublin  found  it 
hard  to  wait.  The  "  rough  handling"  of  the  chiefs  by  Sir 
Edward  Bellingham,  a  Lord  Deputy  under  the  Protector 
Somerset,  roused  a  spirit  of  revolt  that  only  subsided  when 
the  poverty  of  the  Exchequer  forced  him  to  withdraw  the 
garrisons  he  had  planted  in  the  heart  of  the  country.  His 
successor  in  Mary's  reign,  Lord  Sussex,  made  raid  after  raid 
to  no-purpose  on  the  obstinate  tribes  of  the  north,  burning  in 
one  the  Cathedral  of  Armagh  and  three  other  churches.  A 
far  more  serious  breach  in  the  system  of  conciliation  was 
made  when  the  project  of  English  colonization  which  Henry  had 
steadily  rejected  was  adopted  by  the  same  Lord  Deputy,  and 
when  the  country  of  the  O'Connors  was  assigned  to  English 
settlers,  and  made  shire-land  under  the  names  of  King's  and 
Queen's  Counties,  in  honor  of  Philip  and  Mary.  A  savage  war- 
fare began  at  once  between  the  planters  and  the  dispossessed 
septs,  which  only  ended  in  the  following  reign  in  the  extermina- 
tion of  the  Irishmen.  Commissioners  were  appointed  to  sur- 
vey waste  lands,  with  the  aim  of  carrying  the  work  of  coloniza- 
tion into  other  districts,  but  the  pressure  of  the  French  war 
put  an  end  to  these  wider  projects.  Elizabeth  at  her  acces- 
sion recognized  the  risk  of  the  policy  of  confiscation  and 
colonization,  and  the  prudence  of  Cecil  fell  back  on  the  safer 
though  more  tedious  methods  of  Henry. 

The  alarm  however  at  English  aggression  had  already 
spread  among  the  natives  :  and  its  result  was  seen  in  a  revolt 
of  the  north,  and  in  the  rise  of  a  leader  far  more     Ireland 
vigorous  and  able  than  any  with  whom  the  Govern-       sod 
ment  had  had  as  yet  to  contend.     An  acceptance  of   : 
the  Earldom  of  Tyrone  by  the  chief  of  the  O'Neills  brought 
about  the  inevitable  conflict  between  the  system  of  succession 
recognized  by  English  and  that  recognized  by  Irish  law.     On 
the  death  of  the  Earl,  England  acknowledged  his  eldest  son 
as  the  heir  of  his  Earldom  ;  while  the  sept  maintained  their 
older  right  of  choosing  a  chief  from  among  the  members  of 
37 


578  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

\ 

the  family,  and  preferred  Shane  O'Neill,  a  younger  son  of 
less  doubtful  legitimacy.  Sussex  marched  northward  to  settle 
the  question  by  force  of  arms  ;  but  ere  he  could  reach  Ulster 
the  activity  of  Shane  had  quelled  the  disaffection  of  his  rivals, 
the  O'Donnells  of  Donegal,  and  won  over  the  Scots  of  Antrim. 
"  Never  before,"  wrote  Sussex,  "  durst  Scot  or  Irishman  look 
Englishman  in  the  face  in  plain  or  wood  since  I  came  here  ; " 
but  Shane  had  fired  his  men  with  a  new  courage,  and  charg- 
ing the  Deputy's  army  with  a  force  hardly  half  its  number, 
drove  it  back  in  rout  on  Armagh.  A  promise  of  pardon  in- 
duced him  to  visit  London,  and  make  an  illusory  submission, 
but  he  was  no  sooner  safe  home  again  than  its  terms  were 
set  aside  ;  and  after  a  wearisome  struggle,  in  which  Shane 
foiled  the  efforts  of  the  Lord  Deputy  to  entrap  or  to  poison 
him,  he  remained  virtually  master  of  the  north.  His  success 
stirred  larger  dreams  of  ambition  ;  he  invaded  Connaught, 
and  pressed  Clanrickard  hard  :  while  he  replied  to  the  re- 
monstrances of  the  Council  at  Dublin  with  a  bold  defiance. 
"  By  the  sword  I  have  won  these  lands,"  he  answered,  "  and 
by  the  sword  will  I  keep  them."  But  defiance  broke  idly 
against  the  skill  and  vigor  of  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  who  suc- 
ceeded Sussex  as  Lord  Deputy.  The  rival  septs  of  the  north 
were  drawn  into  a  rising  against  O'Neill,  while  the  English 
army  advanced  from  the  Pale  ;  and  Shane,  defeated  by  the 
O'Donnells,  took  refuge  in  Antrim,  and  was  hewn  to  pieces 
in  a  drunken  squabble  by  his  Scottish  entertainers.  The 
victory  of  Sidney  won  ten  years  of  peace  for  the  wretched 
country  ;  but  Ireland  had  already  been  fixed  on  by  the  Papacy 
as  ground  on  which  it  could  with  advantage  fight  out  its 
quarrel  with  Elizabeth.  Practically  indeed  the  religious 
question  hardly  existed  there.  The  ecclesiastical  policy  of 
the  Protestants  had  indeed  been  revived  in  name  on  the 
queen's  accession  ;  Home  was  again  renounced,  the  new  Act 
of  Uniformity  forced  the  English  Prayer-book  on  the  island, 
and  compelled  attendance  at  the  services  in  which  it  was  used. 
There  was  as  before  a  general  air  of  compliance  with  the 
law  ;  even  in  the  districts  without  the  Pale  the  bishops 
generally  conformed,  and  the  only  exceptions  of  which  we 
have  any  information  were  to  be  found  in  the  extreme  south 
and  in  the  north,  where  resistance  was  distant  enough  to  be 
safe.  But  the  real  cause  of  this  apparent  submission  to  the 


THE  CONQUEST   OP   IRELAND.      1588   TO    1610.      579 

Act  of  Uniformity  lay  in  the  fact  that  it  remained,  and  neces- 
sarily remained,  a  dead  letter.     It  was  impossible  to  find  any 
considerable  number  of  English  ministers,  or  of  Irish  priests 
acquainted  with  English.     Meath  was  one  of  the  most  civi- 
lized dioceses,  and  out  of  a  hundred  curates  in  it  hardly  ten 
knew  any   tongue  save   their  own.     The  promise  that  the 
service-book  should  be  translated  into  Irish  was  never  ful- 
filled, and  the  final  clause  of  the  Act  itself  authorized  the  use 
of  a  Latin  rendering  of  it  till  further  order  could  be  taken. 
But  this,  like  its  other  provisions,  was  ignored,  and  through- 
out Elizabeth's  reign  the  gentry  of  the  Pale  went  unquestioned 
to  Mass.     There  was  in  fact  no  religious  persecution,  and  in 
the  many  complaints  of  Shane  O'Neill  we  find  no  mention 
of  a  religious  grievance.     But  this  was  far  from  being  the 
view  of  Rome  or  of  Spain,  of  the  Catholic  missionaries,  or 
of  the  Irish  exiles  abroad.     They  represented,  and  perhaps 
believed,  the  Irish  people  to  be  writhing  under  a  religious 
oppression  which  they  were  burning  to  shake  off.     They  saw 
in  the  Irish  loyalty  to  Catholicism  a  lever  for  overthrowing 
the   heretic  queen   when  in  1579  the  Papacy  planned    the 
greatest  and  most  comprehensive  of  its  attacks  upon  Eliza- 
beth.    While  missionaries  egged  on  the  English  Catholics  to 
revolt,  the  Pope  hastened  to  bring  about  a  Catholic  revolu- 
tion in  Scotland  and  in  Ireland.     Stukely,  an  Irish  refugee, 
had  long  pressed  on  the  Pope  and  Spain  the  policy  of  a  descent 
on  Ireland  ;  and  his  plans  were  carried  out  at  last  by  the 
landing  of  a  small  force  on  the  shores  of  Kerry.     In  spite  of 
the   arrival  in   the   following  year  of  two   thousand  Papal 
soldiers  accompanied  by  a  Legate,  the  attempt  ended  in  a 
miserable  failure.     The  fort  of  Smerwick,  in  which  the  in- 
vaders entrenched  themselves,  was  forced  by  the  new  Deputy, 
Lord  Grey,  to  surrender,  and  its  garrison  put  ruthlessly  to 
the  sword.     The  Earl  of  Desmond,  who  after  long  indecision 
rose  to  support  them,  was  defeated  and  hunted  over  his  own 
country,  which  the  panic-born  cruelty  of  his  pursuers  har- 
ried into  a  wilderness.     Pitiless  as  it  was,  the  work  done  in 
Munster  spread  a  terror  over  the  land  which  served  England 
in  good 'stead  when  the  struggle  with  Catholicism  culminated 
in  the  fight  with  the  Armada  ;  and  not  a  chieftain  stirred 
during  that  memorable  year  save  to  massacre  the  miserable 
men  who  wore  shipwrecked  along  the  coast  of  Bantry  or  Sligo. 


680  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

The  power  of  the  Government  was  from  this  moment 
recognized  everywhere  throughout  the  land.  But  it  was  a 

Conquest  Power  founded  solely  on  terror  ;  and  the  outrages 
ani  Settle-  and  exactions  of  the  soldiery,  who  had  been  flushed 
msnt.  wjth  rapine  arid  bloodshed  in  the  south,  sowed 
during  the  years  which  followed  the  reduction  of  Minister 
the  seeds  of  a  revolt  more  formidable  than  any  which  Eliza- 
beth had  yet  encountered.  The  tribes  of  Ulster,  divided  by 
the  policy  of  Sidney,  were  again  united  by  the  common 
hatred  of  their  oppressors  ;  and  in  Hugh  O'Neill  they  found 
a  leader  of  even  greater  ability  than  Shane  himself.  Hugh 
had  been  brought  up  at  the  English  court,  and  was  in  man- 
ners and  bearing  an  Englishman  ;  he  had  been  rewarded  for 
his  steady  loyalty  in  previous  contests  by  a  grant  of  the  Earl- 
dom of  Tyrone  ;  and  in  his  strife  with  a  rival  chieftain  of  his 
clan  he  had  secured  aid  from  the  Government  by  an  offer 
to  introduce  the  English  laws  and  shire-system  into  his  new 
country.  But  he  was  no  sooner  undisputed  master  of  the 
north  than  his  tone  gradually  changed.  Whether  from  a 
long-formed  plan,  or  from  suspicion  of  English  designs  upon 
himself,  he  at  last  took  a  position  of  open  defiance.  It  was 
at  the  moment  when  the  Treaty  of  Vervins,  and  the  wreck 
of  the  second  Armada,  freed  Elizabeth's  hands  from  the 
struggle  with  Spain,  that  the  revolt  under  Hugh  O'Neill 
broke  the  quiet  which  had  prevailed  since  the  victories  of 
Lord  Grey.  The  Irish  question  again  became  the  chief 
trouble  of  the  queen.  The  tide  of  her  recent  triumphs 
seemed  at  first  to  have  turned.  A  defeat  of  the  English 
forces  in  Tyrone  caused  a  general  rising  of  the  northern 
tribes ;  and  a  great  effort  made  in  1599  for  the  suppression 
of  the  growing  revolt  failed  through  the  vanity  and  diso- 
bedience, il  not  the  treacherous  complicity,  of  the  queen's 
Lieutenant,  the  young  Earl  of  Essex.  His  successor,  Lord 
Mount  joy,  found  himself  master  on  his  arrival  of  only  a  few 
miles  round  Dublin.  But  in  three  years  the  revolt  was  at  an 
end.  A  Spanish  force  which  landed  to  support  it  at  Kinsale 
was  driven  to  surrender ;  a  line  of  forts  secured  the  country 
as  the  English  mastered  it ;  all  open  opposition  was  crushed 
out  by  the  energy  and  the  ruthlessne.ss  of  the  new  Lieuten- 
ant ;  and  a  famine  which  followed  on  his  ravages  completed 
the  devastating  work  of  the  sword.  Hugh  O'Neill  was 


THE   CONQUEST   OF   IRELAND.      1588   TO   1610.      581 

brought  in  triumph  to  Dublin  ;  the  Earl  of  Desmond,  who 
had  again  roused  Muuster  into  revolt,  fled  for  refuge  to  Spain  ; 
and  the  work  of  conquest  was  at  last  brought  to  a  close. 
Under  the  ad  ministration  of  Monntjoy's  successor,  Sir  Arthur 
Chichester,  an  able  and  determined  effort  was  made  for  the 
settlement  of  the  conquered  province  by  the  general  intro- 
duction of  a  purely  English  system  of  government/justice, 
and  property.  Every  vestige  of  the  old  Celtic  constitution 
of  the  country  was  rejected  as  "barbarous."  The  tribal 
authority  of  the  chiefs  was 'taken  from  them  by  law.  They 
were  reduced  to  the  position  of  great  nobles  and  landowners, 
while  their  tribesmen  rose  from  subjects  into  tenants,  owing 
only  fixed  and  customary  dues  and  services  to  their  lords. 
The  tribal  system  of  property  in  common  was  set  aside,  and 
the  communal  holdings  of  the  tribesmen  turned  into  the 
copyholders  of  English  law.  In  the  same  way  the  chieftains 
were  stripped  of  their  hereditary  jurisdiction,  and  the  Eng- 
lish system  of  judges  and  trial  by  jury  substituted  for  their 
proceedings  under  Brehon  or  customary  law.  To  all  this  the 
Celts  opposed  the  tenacious  obstinacy  of  their  race.  Irish 
juries,  then  as  now,  refused  to  convict.  Glad  as  the  tribes- 
men were  to  be  freed  from  the  arbitrary  exactions  of  their 
chiefs,  they  held  them  for  chieftains  still.  The  attempt 
made  by  Chichester,  under  pressure  from  England,  to  intro- 
duce the  English  uniformity  of  religion  ended  in  utter  fail- 
ure ;  for  the  English ry  of  the  Pale  remained  ns  Catholic  as 
the  native  Irishy  ;  and  the  sole  result  of  the  measure  was  to 
build  up  a  new  Irish  people  out  of  both  on  the  common  basis 
of  religion.  Much,  however,  had  been  done  by  the  firm  yet 
moderate  government  of  the  Deputy,  and  signs  were  already 
appearing  of  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  people  to  con- 
form gradually  to  the  new  usages,  when  the  English  Council 
tinder  Elizabeth's  successor  suddenly  resolved  upon  and 
carried  through  the  great  revolutionary  measure  which  is 
known  as  the  Colonization  of  Ulster.  The  pacific  and  con- 
servative policy  of  Chichester  was  abandoned  fora  vast  policy 
of  spoliation  ;  two-thirds  of  the  north  of  Ireland  was  declared 
to  have  been  confiscated  to  the  Crown  by  the  part  its  pos- 
sessors had  taken  in  a  recent  effort  at  revolt  ;  and  the  lands 
which  were  thus  gained  were  allotted  to  new  settlers  of  Scotch 
and  English  extraction.  lu  its  material  results  the  Plan- 


582  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

tation  of  Ulster  was  undoubtedly  a  brilliant  success.  Farms 
and  homesteads,  churches  and  mills,  rose  fast  amidst  the 
desolate  wilds  of  Tyrone.  The  corporation  of  London  under- 
took the  colonization  of  Derry,  and  gave  to  the  little  town 
the  name  which  its  heroic  defense  has  made  so  famous.  The 
foundations  of  the  economic  prosperity  which  has  raised 
Ulster  high  above  the  rest  of  Ireland  in  wealth  and  intel- 
ligence were  undoubtedly  laid  in  the  confiscation  of  1610. 
Nor  did  the  measure  meet  with  any  opposition  at  the  time 
save  that  of  secret  discontent.  The  evicted  natives  with- 
drew sullenly  to  the  lands  which  had  been  left  them  by  the 
spoiler;  but  all  faith  in  English  justice  had  been  torn  from 
the  minds  of  the  Irishry,  and  the  seed  had  beeii  sown  of  that 
fatal  harvest  of  distrust  and  disaffection,  which  was  to  be 
reaped  through  tyranny  and  massacre  in  the  age  to  come. 

The  colonization  of  Ulster  has  carried  us  beyond  the  limits 
of  our  present  story.     The  triumph  of  Mountjoy  flung  its 

luster  over  the  last  days  of  Elizabeth,  but  no  outer 
ofEUzabeti  triumph  could  break  the  gloom  which  gathered 

round  the  dying  queen.  Lonely  as  she  had  always 
been,  her  loneliness  deepened  as  she  drew  towards  the  grave. 
The  statesmen  and  warriors  of  her  earlier  days  had  dropped 
one  by  one  from  her  Council-board  ;  and  their  successors  were 
watching  her  last  moments,  and  intriguing  for  favor  in  the 
eoming  reign.  Her  favorite,  Lord  Essex,  was  led  into  an 
insane  outbreak  of  revolt  which  brought  him  to  the  block. 
The  old  splendor  of  her  court  waned  and  disappeared.  Only 
officials  remained  about  her,  "the  other  of  the  Council  and 
nobility  estrange  themselves  by  all  occasions. "  As  she  passed 
along  in  her  progresses,  the  people  whose  applause  she 
courted  remained  cold  and  silent.  The  temper  of  the  age,  in 
fact,  was  changing,  and  isolating  her  as  it  changed.  Her 
own  England,  the  England  which  had  grown  up  around  her, 
serious,  moral,  prosaic,  shrank  coldly  from  this  brilliant, 
fanciful,  unscrupulous  child  of  earth  and  the  Renascence. 
She  had  enjoyed  life  as  the  men  of  her  day  enjoyed  it.  and 
now  that  they  were  gone  she  clung  to  it  with  a  fierce  tenacity. 
She  hunted,  she  danced,  she  jested  with  her  young  favorites, 
she  coquetted  and  scolded  and  frolicked  at  sixty-seven  as  she 
had  done  at  thirty.  "  The  queen,"  wrote  a  courtier  a  few 
months  before  her  death,  "  was  never  so  gallant  these  many 


THE  CONQUEST    OF   IRELAND.      1588   TO    1610. 

years,  nor  BO  set  upon  jollity."  She  persisted,  in  spite  of  oppo- 
sition, in  her  gorgeous  progresses  from  country-house  to  coun- 
try-house. She  clung  to  business  as  of  old,  and  rated  in  her 
usual  fashion  "one  who  minded  not  to  giving  up  some  matter 
of  account."  But  death  crept  on.  Her  face  became  haggard, 
and  her  frame  shrank  almost  to  a  skeleton.  At  last  her  taste 
for  finery  disappeared,  and  she  refused  to  change  her  dresses 
for  a  week  together.  A  strange  melancholy  settled  down  on 
her  :  "  she  held  in  her  hand,"  says  one  who  saw  her  in  her 
last  days,  "  a  golden  cup,  which  she  often  put  to  her  lips  : 
but  in  truth  her  heart  seemed  too  full  to  need  more  filling." 
Gradually  her  mind  gave  way.  She  lost  her  memory,  the 
violence  of  her  temper  became  unbearable,  her  very  courage 
seemed  to  forsake  her.  She  called  for  a  sword  to  lie  constant- 
ly beside  her,  and  thrust  it  from  time  to  time  through  the 
arras,  as  if  she  heard  murderers  stirring  there.  Food  and 
rest  became  alike  distasteful.  She  sat  day  and  night  propped 
up  with  pillows  on  a  stool,  her  finger  on  her  lip,  her  eyes 
fixed  on  the  floor,  without  a  word.  If  she  once  broke  tin- 
silence,  it  was  with  a  flash  of  her  old  queenliness.  When 
Robert  Cecil  asserted  that  she  "  must"  go  to  bed,  the  word 
roused  her  like  a  trumpet.  "Must!"  she  exclaimed;  'Ms 
must  a  word  to  be  addressed  to  princes  ?  Little  man,  little 
man  !  thy  father,  if  he  had  been  alive,  durst  not  have  used 
that  v/ord."  Then,  as  her  anger  spent  itself,  she  sank  into 
her  old  dejection.  "  Thou  art  so  presumptuous,"  she  said, 
"  because  thou  knowest  I  shall  die."  She  rallied  once  more 
when  the  ministers  beside  her  bed  named  Lord  Beaucharnp. 
the  heir  to  the  Suffolk  claim,  as  a  possible  successor. 
will  have  no  rogue's  son,"  she  cried  hoarsely,  "in  my  seat." 
But  she  gave  no  sign,  save  a  motion  of  the  head,  at  the  men- 
tion of  the  king  of  Scots.  She  was  in  fact  fast  becoming  in- 
sensible ;  and  early  the  next  morning  the  life  of  Elizabeth,  a 
life  so  great,  so  strange  and  lonely  in  its  greatness,  passed 
quietly  away. 

END  OF  VOLUME  I. 


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